Things We Know
by Mirrordance
Summary: Complete! A salute to the classic episode Faith... would Sam still have taken a dying Dean to Reverend Roy LeGrange even if he knew that to save his brother would be at the cost of a stranger's life? Alternate ending. Warning: Character death and language
1. Chapter 1

Author: Mirrordance

Title: Things We Know

Summary: A salute to the classic episode Faith... would Sam still have taken a dying Dean to Reverend Roy LeGrange even if he knew that to save his brother would be at the cost of a stranger's life? Alternate ending. Warning: Character death and language.

**Note**:This is my first fic for Supernatural, and will be posted in 3 parts. Standard disclaimers apply. "Things We Know" is an homage to my favorite episode "Faith," and almost like a 'love song' for the entire series. Many of my favorite lines from the show will be recognized by fans as having been pulled from various episodes and then shoved into the fic's alternate situations (the reason why will be explained later). These will be attributed in the footnotes.

* * *

Things We Know

* * *

**Chapter 1: Sam**

_You remember the weird things_, Sam reflected, as he absently leafed through his father's journal, not really seeing anything of it, as his mind was situated quite far from the details in the ratty old book, and even farther from the insanely sterile, _dead_ damn hospital room he was sitting in.

He glanced at his sleeping brother with a frown.

_Wake up, damn it_.

He sighed in familiar disappointment (he's been at this for hours), and looked back down at the book he wasn't reading.

_What a long day_, he thought miserably, feeling bone-weary. Today, after all, felt as if it began almost forty-eight hours ago, with him and Dean preparing for a hunt. And then that deal turned south and ended with his heretofore seemingly invincible big brother on the wet ground, not a breath or a heartbeat left in him. Lying on a puddle of water, looking life-dried and dead-and-out, precisely because that was what he was.

_Dead as doornail_, he thought, morbidly, experimentally, as if to say it many times would help him get over it, _Signed off, shut down, lights out, fat-lady-sung_...

He shook his head at himself in disgust, and reverted back to that thought,_You remember the weird things._

He could still hear the agitated sound his booted feet made against the puddles on the ground as he pounded over to where Dean lay. He skinned his knees when she slid to land next to his brother. He could still feel the initial sensation of cold wetness on his knees, when the water diffused past his jeans to his skin. He knew he was alert and aware at the time, because the sensations were so acute, their memory so vivid and accessible. The other memories, the tougher ones, the harsher ones, were big, imposing black holes. Empty and overwhelming at the same time. He knew they impacted him heavily and yet he couldn't get a handle on them.

He couldn't remember the feeling of Dean's skin when he grabbed him. He couldn't remember the absence of the pulse on his brother's neck when he reached for it (though arguably, he couldn't possibly remember something that wasn't there), his brother's still chest beneath his palms as he pounded, and cried, and called him back from wherever it was his dumbhead-electrocuted-lazy-ass had hidden himself.

He did not think he was surprised that Dean had managed to claw his way back out that dank hole. If he had been surprised, he, again, couldn't remember. But he did remember Dean's hazel gaze settling on his face. Dean had opened his eyes, and found Sam straight away. Dean had always come whenever Sam called. And speaking of calling... Sam did not remember calling the ambulance either but it came. He could not remember remembering the number of 9-_frigging_-1-_what-the-hell-comes-next_-1 but heck, he supposed he must have.

He flipped a page. And another.

There was no rhyme or reason to it. Just flipping pages here. He read a few words, skipped a ton. Sometimes his mind and body were so disjointed that he knew for a fact he was reading something even as his hands decided to flip on over to the next page, impatient, uncooperative hands--

"Whatcha doin' over there?"

Sam jumped at the voice that grated – and there could be no other way to describe the sound than that – into his distracted, half-dreaming thoughts. He scrambled to his feet from the stiff-backed chair that would have been uncomfortable even if he didn't stand over six feet tall, and the miscellany of paperwork that had been on his lap fell to the floor.

"Dean," he said, face breaking into a nervous smile, as he stood over his older brother's hospital bed. Sam was always too tall, limbs too long, and they seemed more so today as his hands lifted from his sides and then sagged back, awkwardly, as if he did not know what to do with them.

"You should be..." Dean said, liquid, lazy gaze shifting away from his brother's face toward the floor, where papers and the all-too-familiar leather-bound, world-weary journal were scattered. He breathed a sigh, and closed his eyes as he said, "You should be more careful with that."

Sam's brows furrowed as he watched his brother go back to sleep. He looked out the window, and grimaced at the sun.

_Anticlimactic_, he thought inanely, _I waited for you all night and this is the show? You're losing your touch, bro_.

"What I was doing," Sam murmured, in response to his now-sleeping and apparently oblivious brother's first, waking question.

"You've been out like a light since they brought you in before dawn today," Sam said, almost casually, pretending to have a decent conversation as he picked up the things he had dropped. His voice sounded strange, unused. This was fairly rare, especially since he's always been a vocal kid, and had been on the yakking path toward law school before his life took on another weird, tragic turn.

He let the loose sheets of paper settle on a pile in the seat he had just vacated. The journal Dean had been so concerned about he kept in his hands, as he walked back to stand by his brother's bedside.

"I've been sitting here waiting for you to wake up," Sam continued, "They said you're stable for now, but you need to do a few tests in a few hours. I'm not that worried--"

_A lie_, he thought to himself, B_ut what's another..._

"Or I guess I should be," he chuckled quietly, "You were never very good at taking tests."

He grinned at his sleeping brother's face. It faded quickly, when he realized it hadn't been very sporting of him.

"The cops are coming in a bit," Sam said, "They said they want to ask me a few follow-up questions, but I think they're really hoping to catch you awake. Your doc's tough, though. Barely even let me stay past the standard visiting hours, but I guess we get a break, you being a big hero and all... I guess we do get thanked sometimes.

"I was catching up on reading dad's journal," Sam cleared his throat, "You know I forget the man can be funny sometimes. I realized that since getting this, we only ever look at the things he wrote about in reference to a case we're working on – what a monster is, what it does, how to stop it... I started looking through it page by page. His thoughts escape the case when he writes sometimes, and I end up reading not just about monsters, but the way he thinks about things."

_I really read that_? He thought, inanely. He looked out the window. The sun was up. _I guess I must have. And I guess it really has been awhile since I sat here._

He chuckled to himself, feeling slightly manic from exhaustion and worry, and both feelings were being eased the longer he kept up this pretend-conversation with Dean. He lowered the railing on the bed, and leaned his hip next to his brother's unmoving, miserably IV-pricked and peppered arm as he leafed through the journal in search of an entry that might be interesting.

"This one's a part of that log he kept on _Aliases_," Sam said, as he read his father's writing aloud to his sleeping brother, "_I think I've been doing this job too long..._"

_

* * *

_

Aliases

_

* * *

_

I think I've been doing this job too long.

_The phone rings and asks for a stranger and all the time I assume it must have been one of those names I left behind somewhere and I say, 'Yeah, this is Mr. So and So,' even if I can't remember the name half the time._

_Today I picked up a call from a frantic woman named Elsie from Maryland who says her seventeen-year-old was abducted by a witch. She was looking for Rodney Glaveholden and though the name was unfamiliar to me, I assumed it must have been one of those aliases that I just casually tossed out._

_"Yeah, this is he," I said, not even repeating the name because I might have gotten it wrong, and she told me about her son and the witch and I said: 'Okay, then. I'm coming over.'_

_I drove four hours to her door only to find that sometimes, a wrong number is really just a wrong number. And when someone calls and you don't think it's for you, don't say so._

_The "witch" was her only son's girlfriend. She said she was going to call Rachel the B-word but she's too much of a class act to do that. I told her to say that next time her punk-assed son is snatched up by his girlfriend, she should go right out and call that girl a bitch and ease all confusion in the future. Which of course confused her, because who else but a hunter would have expected that a "witch" is an actual witch?_

_From here on out, aliases must be monitored and more-or-less remembered. Each one's got a pretty decent cover story to tell, and besides, I gotta keep track of how much I'm milking off of each of them._

_1. Bert Afranian and son Hector_

_2. Elroy McGillicudy and his two loving sons..._

* * *

Sam looked up from the journal to find his brother half-awake and looking up at him, an odd light in his green eyes.

"I know that one," Dean said, licking his chapped lips as he breathed and his brows furrowed in thought, "But I can't remember...actually being around for it..."

"Maybe we were too young," Sam said, looking mildly embarrassed that Dean had been awake and listening after all. He shifted uncomfortably on his half-seated lean on Dean's bed. He made as if to stand, thinking Dean would be more comfortable having more space. To his surprise, Dean snatched up his wrist and kept him where he was.

"So how are you feeling?" Sam asked, after a hesitant pause. He sank back down on the bed, and Dean, looking slightly embarrassed, pulled his hand away. Sam could not help but note that he kept it near Sam's wrist, though, as if ready to re-use it at a moment's notice.

Dean snorted at him, and looked at him pointedly. Sam imagined the verbal equivalent of that look must be _Is that a trick question_?

"Awesome," Dean said, breathlessly, after Sam stared at him right back and effectively pressed him for an answer, "I just," he gasped, "I'll get over it. This is just... just like being tired," he winced, and corrected himself, "Dog-tired."

Sam frowned. He did not like how all of Dean's words sounded like sighs, how his breaths came in short and how lazy that heart beat as the machines that surrounded them beeped in reflection of its sluggish movements.

"What do the medicos say?" Dean asked, nodding toward the door, "Am I getting out of here soon?"

"You know the answer to that," Sam scolded him, mildly, "You were _dead_, Dean. Take a breath for a moment."

Dean waved the issue away wearily, but found he could not disagree. He had no inclination or strength to fight Sam off for now, at any rate. He shifted and winced in obvious discomfort.

"You need me to call someone?" Sam asked, anxiously reaching for the call button even before his brother could reply, "Are you in pain?"

"Don't have a cow, drama queen," Dean groaned, "Can't a guy scratch his ass without having to answer your questions?"

Sam's lips quirked into a smile that he smothered right away, before his cocky brother could spot the weakness and punchline all their problems away. It wouldn't be the first time Dean had conned Sam into making serious injuries into jokes and suddenly they were out the door, AMA, Dean passed out on the passenger seat, Sam on the wheel, scratching his head and wondering how the hell he got talked into that.

"Not this time, hotshot," Sam told him, seriously, "You got a few tests coming up. And then we'll see."

* * *

They rolled him away to this floor and that, for this test and this machine and that. Sam was deeply troubled by Dean's constantly slipping in and out of sleep along the course of the battery of tests that he was sent to. The again, an alert, energetic, belligerent older brother after being being fried to a crisp dead might be too much to ask.

Sam reflected that it wasn't his fault he thought of Dean that way, since he was certain it was Dean himself who had cultivated that image, after all these years looking after his younger brother. He got thrown around and spat out and he always came out kicking somehow, every time, kicking and throwing punches and running that mouth.

_He'll be up and around soon_, Sam thought, though of course he could still taste that blinding fear he had felt upon first sight of Dean on the ground. It wasn't only Dean's heart that had stopped that night.

_Splashing water and cold knees_, that was all he could clearly remember.

Dean was awake again by the time they brought him back to his room, and Sam settled his brother down and handed him the remote control, before taking the time to settle their bills at the admittance desk. The 'Birkovitzes,' care of corporate America, will be saving Dean's life today. Sam stopped feeling guilty about these things a long time ago.

Next order of business: grateful cops. _Almost_ as bothersome as the stern ones that wanted him and his brother behind bars. Couldn't any and all uniforms just leave them alone? He rapped the cover-up lie like the true artist that he was. The two policemen never stood a chance. It was in the midst of this conversation that he caught sight of the man of the hour, the only one he really wanted to see. Dean's doctor.

* * *

Three Days Later

* * *

There were two pages missing from John Winchester's precious little leather-bound journal. Sam knew this very well because he was the one who had torn them out.

It was about three days into finding out that his brother had weeks left to live. Three days... he remembered thinking there was something vaguely biblical about that.

_On the third day He rose again..._

Patients suffering from heart failure had a tendency to breathe harshly some hours after sleep. Something about the left side of the heart and what it had to do with the lungs. The doctors were speaking to him in English but it could have been a whole other language. If he wanted to be a goddamn doctor he'd have taken up pre-med instead.

Ultimately, the doctors and nurses have effectively turned his world upside-down when they told him it was perfectly "normal" for his brother to sound that rough, labored way when he breathed. Perfectly normal for a normal dying guy at this stage of this illness, that is.

_Normal._

_God._

They gave Dean oxygen supply through a mask at night, something he did not put up with in the fewer and fewer hours that he stayed awake during the day. Sam liked drowning out Dean's drowning lung sounds by reading their dad's journal out loud. He did it partly for himself, of course, and also without a doubt for Dean, who seemed to enjoy them, and who would always wake up part of the time.

"It's like I can hear dad," Dean had drawled out, that one particularly bad night, three days into finding out he was dying, when his breaths were harsher and he looked as if he really thought he wasn't going to see life through to daylight.

Sam had finished the paragraph he was reading, counted to ten, and then ran to the bathroom, threw up, splashed his face with ice cold water, and gave his father another call.

He called John Winchester every day and night since finding out about Dean's situation, saying mostly the same words, the only notable difference being just the increasing anxiety in the tone of delivery. In the early days, he started with faux confidence.

_They don't know things we know, right (1)?_

Sometimes he said it with barely-restrained anguish.

_Dean is sick, and the doctors say there's nothing they could do (1)._

That night, it had even been delivered in outright antagonism.

_You probably won't get this (1), you son-of-a-bitch_.

It had been _that_ bad a night. He went back to Dean's room, angry and queasy. And then he picked up his father's journal and lo and behold, the answer sat right there.

This entry he did not read aloud. This one got his hands cold and shaking. There was something in his gut that knew, just _knew_ that this could be the answer.

* * *

_Faith Healers_

* * *

_God save us from the half the people who think they are doing God's work (1). I don't know what's worse. Those con artists who scam sick people and their loved ones out of their hard-earned money, or the honest-to-goodness whack-jobs who believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that they're the real thing. _

_Been to a few, of course, since I always appreciated a good scam and since if it does work it usually means I have a job to do anyway._

(Sam speed-reads over John's dissection of psychosomatic effects of faith healing, the impact of mass hysteria, and techniques of some common scams, including the use of co-conspirators and plants, hallucinogenic drugs, hypnotism, and hand tricks that involved simulation of tumor removal by using animal parts).

_And then there's this guy, Roy LeGrange, up in Nebraska. Boggled the hell out of me how he did things like that. Joshua had been right when he told me to go take a look. Thought he might be the real thing. Even met a hunter up in Wyoming, said he brought his near-dead kid on over, took what the old man had to give, and then just up and skipped town._

_What the hell? I think I asked, and he said things like that happen and you don't look it in the mouth (1) no more. You just took it and went (many people sure have). Because deep down you know there's something wrong with it, and you don't want to know what that is, not after you've already had your slice of the pie. I remember what he said after that, 'cos I thought it sounded damned true. He said it would have been like drinking really good pitch black coffee and then reaching the bottom of the cup and finding a ratty, bloody band-aid._

(Sam reads through the healer mythology, of shamans and witch doctors, alchemists and wizards, and Jesus and the Saints. He read through ancient remedies, magical cure-alls, potions and spells. John did not think anything fit. Sam was beginning to recognize the tone of his father, whenever he was ready to go hip-deep into a job. That was, until the efforts halted, stopped in its tracks by the only thing that could ever move John Winchester to distraction).

_Heard somebody start talking about some shit going down about this Iowa... and I get that feeling again. The kind that assures me I'm getting closer and closer to Mary's killer. Like there's nothing else in the world. No job, no faith, no magic. Just me and the road and the goddamned yellow-eyed demon at the end of it._

(The entry on faith healers ended, cold, right there.)

* * *

Sam didn't tear the pages out right away, of course.

He went back to the nearby motel room he rented whenever he was bullied out by the nurses to rest, eat, sleep, bathe, _whatever_, and he used the time to do some research.

The first thing to do was call up this Joshua character from his father's journal and ask him what else he knew. And then he checked LeGrange's location, and estimated how long it would take for him and Dean to drive there.

_Couple of hours_, he concluded, _Not bad_.

That is, if he wasn't traveling with a terminally-ill heart patient. If he was pulling Dean out of the hospital, he had to be damn sure this was the real thing, because the risks to his brother's life were real. So real his stomach hurt thinking about it.

_I don't want to risk you_, he thought of Dean, _If this ends up to be some kind of fluke_.

LeGrange was just one of two things, as they say. He's either dead-right or dead-wrong. And Dean was the one at stake.

_But maybe it's time for a little faith (1)_, he decided.

He read up on Dean's condition and the best means to keep him comfortable in travel. He read up on lodging accommodations in the area, thinking they could probably spend a little bit more this time for certain amenities that could be helpful to Dean. He scoped out nearby hospitals in case his brother needed emergency care.

He checked the weather for the next few days. He had even gone through looking at local attractions he and Dean could visit while his brother recovered, just to keep him away from hunting for a little while. He kept himself busy for hours, before he realized that his hands had been cold from the get-go because deep inside, he knew there was something wrong with this picture.

He looked at the people LeGrange healed. He studied them carefully, trying to check if they were profiting at all from what had happened to them. Was it a conspiracy? Were they all pretending? But the only link they had were the healing hands of the Nebraska reverend. They even went on different, irregularly-spaced times. Some of them have never even been to Nebraska before the day they stepped into LeGrange's tent as terminally-ill, and then stepped out in perfect health.

It was by pure, cursed chance that Sam saw what it was that was making this whole scenario feel like a cold punch in the gut. The news of the healing of the sick was making waves in the local papers. Beside the front-page article about a man with cancer being healed was a small side bar that talked about a local gang leader dying of the same thing, suddenly, undiagnosed cancer, on the same day that the other was healed.

Sam had no trouble finding the same life-for-a-life pattern in all the other cases.

_God_, he thought, shaking, knowing that if he hadn't literally just stumbled into the pattern, he and Dean would be on the road this time tomorrow. And this time in the tomorrow after that, he'd have had his brother back already.

_Why did you have to keep digging (3)_? He asked himself, miserably.

Growling softly, he tore out the two pages in his dad's journal that talked about Roy LeGrange. He folded the sheets carefully, and then shoved them into his wallet. He knew it was a price he was willing to pay. If it should ever come to that he had no other choice but to go to Nebraska, Dean was never going to know what it had cost to save his life.

* * *

When they were growing up, it was Sam with all the tough questions and Dean with all the transparent quarter-truths. Dean would pretend to have the answers and for a time, at least, Sam would pretend to accept them. The reason they both could tell anytime one was keeping something from the other, after all, was through years of practice, sifting through each other's lies. They made great liars and great spotters-of-liars. The pretenses became their own truth, and they understood each other as only brothers could.

"You didn't call dad, did you?" Dean would ask, once a day, every day, the moment Sam entered his hospital room at the very crack of visiting hours. He asked this question everyday since they were told he was dying and had weeks left to live.

Dean looked bone-weary, as if the day was at its end instead of its beginning. As if he hadn't spent the entire day and night in bed. He looked exactly how the dying should look, Sam reflected with a dark scowl.

_Normal_...

"You gotta ask me that everyday?" Sam sighed, as he stepped inside the room and settled on his usual post, by Dean's arm, on the bed. They looked at each other eye-to-eye that way.

Dean just stared at him, imploring, and earnest. Stripped and naked to Sam's eyes because he knew him, but more so because Dean was ailing and disarmed. Sam read the look easily, and it was easier than he had ever been able to, knowing from that very first time Dean had asked, that the question really meant, _I know you called him. Is he coming_?

One of these days, Sam knew, the unspoken question tailing that train of thought would mean something else entirely.

_I know you called him. Why isn't he here_?

"I didn't. You told me not to," Sam lied with a casual shrug. He would never admit that he called their father until he could tell Dean that the great and unfortunately scarce John Winchester was also coming. Hell, he called John twice, maybe thrice a day by now.

"Good," Dean said with a satisfied-_for-now_ nod. If he had a mirror, he'd have recognized it as reminiscent of those half-skeptical looks a younger Sammy once used to give him and his lies.

_Dad was here (4)..._

_Why didn't he wake me up? (4)_

_He tried to like, a thousand times (4)..._

Sam wondered if his bastard father would give him the opportunity to try and toss back these lies to Dean, when the time came that his desperately sick brother was finally even more desperate enough to ask him, flat out, why their father hasn't come to see him, or help him.

The false answer to that unspoken question was the only agenda of any day that Sam visited Dean in this god-forsaken little hospital. False answers to unspoken questions sure sounded like fiction, but either way, it was that one thing that needed to be tackled before they could discuss or do anything else. That bit of nasty business being done, the brothers would move on to a miscellany of other discussions.

The fairly compelling topic of daytime television came up every now and then, and Sam could tell that Dean's initial and profound dislike for them, as he had expressed that first morning he woke up in the hospital and saw a few soaps, had softened to resignation, and then curiosity, and finally, genuine interest, in the past week that he had no choice but to watch them to amuse himself.

"He doesn't know she used to be a man," Dean pointed out, randomly, to Sam's ears, because he wasn't paying attention to the television at all. He seldom did. His older brother chuckled quietly, "Man. I sure want to be around when he finds out."

Sam winced. If that fucking soap takes its fucking time at the reveal, Dean probably wouldn't be alive long enough to see that.

"What would you do?" Sam asked him with a small, hesitant smile, indulging his brother and at the same time, not wanting to follow through with his darker thoughts.

Dean's nostrils flared and his eyes widened with his massively raised brows, "Seriously, Sammy! Give me some credit, dude! If it were me, it would never have gotten that far without my knowing, for chirssakes."

"I don't know, man," Sam laughed, finding his brother's severe reaction, as always, theatrical and comical, "Hard to tell these days."

"Maybe for you," Dean puffed, wincing as he shifted his weight, "I got a nose like a vampire on the hunt."

"I don't doubt it," Sam agreed, glancing minutely at the screens that monitored his brother's vitals when he shifted. He was not surprised that Dean caught the quick, worried look.

"I'm fine," Dean grated at him, "Can't a guy shift around in this god-forsaken uncomfortable bed? I can't believe I'm dying here. I've laid on motels with better mattresses."

Sam shook his head and frowned at Dean. Apparently, they could both know that Dean was dying, and they could both sit in this room and be surrounded by things that screamed that fact, but they were not allowed to talk about it.

_We can try and keep him comfortable at this point, but I give him a couple weeks at most, maybe a month (1)..._

"This place sucks," Dean muttered, "Wish of a dying man, Sammy. Bust me the hell out of here."

"You know what they say," Sam snapped, "Go call the Make a Wish Foundation. As far as I'm concerned, you're staying put right here."

"What the hell for?" growled Dean, hands fisting at the sheets, "No one's doing anything, I feel like people are just waiting around for me to keel over and die. They're all looking at me funny. So are you, but then if I were out of here, I'd just have to deal with one."

"We're not having this conversation again," Sam said, sternly, "Your best chance of surviving longer is to be here, all right?"

"Longer like this is like purgatory," Dean groaned, banging his head lightly against his pillows, "I just wanna have a bit of fun before the the reaper gets with the program. Besides, I'm not dying in a hospital where the nurses aren't even hot (1)."

Sam was torn between giving himself a heart attack and smacking his brother over the head in frustration and annoyance. But he always knew that that was not the best way to get what he wanted from Dean. Granted, Sam wasn't always in a strategic mood and gave in to the desire to butt heads with Dean (who had a talent for pushing people to their limits). But he knew very well that Dean had a weak spot for sad eyes and serious, earnest tones.

"I need 'longer,'" Sam said, quietly, looking away, "Please, Dean. If you're going to die anyway, it's not too much to ask, is it? I need any bit of time we can buy, okay?"

"Time to what?"

"Time to look for a way to save you."

"You won't find it."

"It would kill me not to look."

Dean stared at him, frowned flatly, the way he always did when he knew he had lost, once again, to Sammy's well-oiled, patented baby-brother-pleading. He is very, _very_ good at what he does.

"I know," Dean said, half-growling and half-sighing, "Damn it."

Sam smiled at him in relief. He needed time. Time to be with his brother for as long as he possibly could, yes. And time to find solutions to Dean's illness that didn't involve killing somebody else.

* * *

Their father's tendency to sidebar personal thoughts alongside more academic, useful information eventually led to some mention of his sons.

It was strange, though, how he seldom even mentioned them, and Sam came to realize that in his own maniacally paranoid way, John Winchester must have done that deliberately, in an effort to protect his boys.

The first indication that the writer of the journal was not some loner psychopath but a decent man with children in his presence occurred during a case that just hit so close to home that John apparently could not help but write about his boys.

Sam held the journal open and took his usual post, sitting next to Dean's arm on the bed. During his stay in the hospital, Dean had recovered his old, adolescent habit of taking up as little space as possible on one side of the bed, always wordlessly making room for his younger brother.

"Dean," Sam called, softly, "You awake?"

A lengthy pause, before Dean sighed and cracked open an eye. "It depends. What's on today?"

Sam smiled tightly, shaking his head in amusement, "Have you ever read _1,001 Arabian Nights_?"

"God," Dean muttered, "Count me out then..."

Sam looked at him wistfully, "Never mind."

Dean rolled his eyes at his younger brother in irritation, "What?"

"There's this king," Sam shared, "Who was duped by his wife. He had her executed and he decided every woman must be unfaithful, so he has his vizier find him a virgin to marry every day, spends the night with her, and kills her come the morning."

"And we thought Roger had a rough love life," Dean commented, dryly.

Sam bit his lip at asking _Who_ when he realized that was the name of the character dating the trans-gendered woman in Dean's favorite soap. _Right_. Sam wisely pretended not to hear it.

"So the kingdom eventually runs out of virgins except for the vizier's daughter," Sam continues, "Who volunteers for the job. Every night she tells the king a story, except she never ends it, effectively forcing the king to keep her alive until he could hear the rest of the tale, the next night. So she keeps giving him these stories and cliffhangers for 1,001 nights, always trusting that his interest in her stories can keep her alive."

Dean's brows rose, in realization, "Huh."

Sam knew that his brother understood what he was trying to say. Reading dad's journal to Dean was like _Arabian Nights _in reverse; _If I keep telling you stories, maybe you'd stay around_.

Dean's eyes darkened in introspection for a moment, before the usual glint of his deliberate brand of humor lightened his gaze perforce.

"So what, Sheherazade?" Dean asked him, blinking slowly, and Sam knew he was tiring again, "Is that it? That's the story for tonight? You're such a girl--"

Sam was surprised that Dean referred to the heroine storyteller's name, "So you have read it!"

"I didn't say I haven't," Dean pointed out, "I went to school too, boy wonder. Besides, her stories had lore on djinns and things like that. Only thing in lit class that made any real-world sense to me."

Sam grinned at his brother, "Aced it?"

"I'm not a freak, dude," Dean corrected, as he closed his eyes, "I got a B, which is a lot more than I can say..." his voice began to lower and drift off, "... for all the other stuff... I'm listening, all right?" he clarified to Sam, as he closed his eyes again.

"I know," Sam said quietly, looking away from his brother's losing struggle with fatigue, fearing that if he watched longer he would not be able to find his voice.

"This one's different, Dean," he said, clearing his throat, "It's one of the few times that dad even mentions us."

_

* * *

_

_Suicide Cluster_

* * *

_It shames me whenever I get to thinking how easy it was to make them happy sometimes. _

_When they were younger, it was raggedy old toys from here and there, people's trash, really, but the older one had a salesman's flair for pitching crazy ideas to his younger brother, and then that one's genius imagination took them the rest of the way. Dean insists the cardboard box is a magic carpet and eventually, Sam takes them to the exotic locales of Arabia._

_They got a bit older, and Dean started getting a kick out of my hand-me-downs. Old music, old clothes, old knives. And Sam, in turn, got a kick out of getting Dean's old things. And then the feeling went around, because you get kind of suffused when someone looks up to you enough to want the things you used to own, even ratty clothes. _

_When the older one hit his teens and his occupations broadened the way a man's usually does, I suddenly realized I was going to be saddled talking about women and the fucking birds and bees to him. He sat there and pretended to be attentive, and then I saw with this mad glint in his eye and realized that he was also pretending to be a dumb-ass._

_"Oh for god's sake," I remembered muttering, scratching my head._

_"I was gonna let it go on longer," he had said with that infectious smirk, "But hell, dad, you fold so easy I just felt guilty about it. I know more than you'd ever care to tell me, dad. It's okay. You don't have to say anything."_

_I wanted to smother him. Kid had that streak, beautiful-goofy, just like his mother. He didn't lumber around looking awkward and forbidding, like me and the tall one, we tended to look like rain clouds._

(Sam didn't appreciate this commentary, pausing from reading it aloud. His half-asleep brother was smiling even with his eyes closed. "Stop it, Dean," Sam snaps at him, before continuing to read from John's journal.)

_The job in New York had been a tough one. The boys were country folk, like me. None of us liked the cold, brisk bustle, and anyone who could make heads or tails of the subway had to have a third sense hidden somewhere. The Impala had to stay at overpriced parking. No way were we going around Manhattan in her. Drivers here are crazy, and coming from me, that's saying a lot._

_A cluster of suicides occurred in this university. And I had two young sons in an excellent profile to fit in and find out what's doing it and why._

_There shouldn't be anything supernatural about a cluster of suicides. It went alongside the increasing range of the media. Oldest one I've heard of was up in 1774, when this book about a guy who kills himself over a girl came out and a bunch of copycats found it sensible to similarly off themselves. Nonfiction stories covering suicides, like news items on television or print, have a greater tendency to inspire copycats. In Japan, Germany and Australia, studies have suggested that there is a correlation between news circulation and coverage of a suicide, and the number of copycats who follow shortly after. It's why the damn reporters have some sort of a suicide coverage ethical guideline. It seems the more people know about a popular type of suicide, the more people follow._

_In this cluster in New York, the index case – the initial case – came out of nowhere; normal guy, really. Just turned eighteen, just stepped into college. An aspiring musician and a promising student on the fast track of pre-law. No history of mental illness or drug abuse. No history of violence. As far as anyone knew he had no problems at all- not with his family, not with his pretty little girlfriend, not with any of his straight-arrow friends. No quirky habits, no secret life. And then he hangs himself in the shower, just like that._

_His mom and girlfriend followed not long after that; nothing people found too strange. I know I didn't, the first time I heard about it. Maybe they were just really unhappy. God knows... these things cross your mind, once in awhile, thinking about losses and people being gone and... and...things like that--_

_And then his roommate bit the dust. Tragic, but the same could be said of why. And then the janitor goes. Followed by his son. And then it went on, amplifying like a damned virus. The toll was at a chilly eleven by the time the boys and I rolled into town._

_Sam sat in on the dead kid's pre-law classes, even a Latin class. God knows how, but he had a tongue for languages, and it always amazes me how he could turn a phrase. Might have come from a lifetime of trying to pull one over his strong-willed older brother's head. But he shone like a light when he talked about things he's learned--_

("Liar," Dean muttered, "He didn't really say that greeting-card-sissy shit."

"Read and weep, bro," Sam said with a laugh, turning the journal Dean's way, though his brother didn't even bother opening his eyes.

"Big head," Dean murmured, teasing Sam, "Let's get to when he talks about me."

"He doesn't," Sam lies, "All he says is that you're a knucklehead."

Dean just grunts out a rumbling, indulgent chuckle.)

_Kid even started to do homework, as if he had to. Neither Dean or I made fun of him, or told him to stop. He took to it as if starved. I had a feeling he was killing the other kids out there. The realization was making me damn proud and damn scared. I knew we had to get out of there as soon as we could._

_And then one day he came back from school, laughing half-mad. I looked at his older brother questioningly, who just shrugged, though his eyes knew something._

_"Dad," Sammy had said, as he fought to catch a breath, "Technically, we're a bunch of criminals."_

_The realization was theoretically comical, especially since it was also very plain and obvious. But that thought, put together with his intelligence and presumably wasted potential, turned the comical into crippling. I knew then and there that things have changed for ever. That old toys and hand-me-downs wasn't going to do anybody any good anymore._

(Sam would not have read this part, if he wasn't sure it would keep Dean awake and alert.

"I've forgotten," Sam said, quietly, "When exactly things changed."

"I hate that damn job," Dean muttered.)

_The cause of the deaths turned out to be a ghostly song. It was that "Suicide Song" urban legend come to life in this small college town. The aspiring musician has come up with this track, his one greatness, that touched him to the core. Every suicide could be traced back to this CD he had made and listened to. The mom and the girlfriend who had cleaned out his dorm room and listened to it. The roommate who heard them play it. The janitor who cleaned up the roommates' room and took home the record to his son...and so on._

_I'm wondering if the index case had made a Demon Deal somewhere. Greatness and the truest, most beautiful, heartfelt piece of music in the world, in exchange for death. But the timetable is too quick. If this is a Deal, it's the shittiest one I ever heard of. I guess it could be that some things just come out of somewhere dark. The scary thing about a ghostly song, though, is that you can salt and burn whatever medium it came in, but once heard, it stuck somewhere in your head. If you listened to it you are dead, even after a bunch of hunters hit your town and tore it down looking for every damned copy of that thing. I know three more people died even after we discovered what was going on. _

_The Winchesters stayed three weeks more, just to make sure we didn't miss anything. At the end of those weeks, Sam looked different. He moved in this fast, efficient, _impatient_ way, as if he was almost halfway away from this life_.

TO BE CONTINUED...

**NOTE: **The numbers in the statements above correspond to having been pulled verbatim or slightly altered from the episodes:

(1) Faith

(2) In My Time of Dying

(3) What Is and What Could Never Be

(4) A Very Supernatural Christmas

(5) Home

(6) Devil's Trap

(7) Red Sky at Morning

(8) Malleous Maleficarum

(9) Fresh Blood


	2. Chapter 2

Author: Mirrordance

Title: Things We Know

Summary: A salute to the classic episode Faith... would Sam still have taken a dying Dean to Reverend Roy LeGrange even if he knew that to save his brother would be at the cost of a stranger's life? Alternate ending. Warning: Character death and language.

**Note**:

This is my first fic for Supernatural, and will be posted in 3 parts. Standard disclaimers apply. "Things We Know" is an homage to my favorite episode "Faith," and almost like a 'love song' for the entire series. Many of my favorite lines from the show will be recognized by fans as having been pulled from various episodes and then shoved into the fic's alternate situations (the reason why will be explained later). These will be attributed in the footnotes.

Lots of thanks to all readers and reviewers Flaming Telepaths, PADavis, Zuimar and Stoneage Woman. Every encouraging word counts, especially since this is my first shot at this universe. Anyway, here we go :)

" " "

" " "

**Chapter 2: Dean**

Dean was getting nervous, because Sam was beginning to ask weird, perceptive, double-meaning questions. Like he did when he was five. He used to do that as a child, a habit he apparently never lost. The same way he never lost the habit of reading through their father's writings, especially the parts that were the most painful. Dean tended to shy away from those entries the same way Sam seemed to magnetize to them.

_And biting his nails,_ Dean thought,_ Sam never got rid of that._

Sam was born agitated, Dean reflected, shaking legs and poor, nail-biting Sam.

"Helps me think," he had said distractedly by way of explanation, more than once, anytime Dean started looking at him funny.

"You believe in God?" Sam asked him, out of the blue. The sun was setting, and his chest was feeling heavy again. Sam could not have missed that. Dean slumped against four pillows that held-him-up-_more-or-less_.

"Do you like strawberry pie?" Dean asked him, wryly, trying to calm down, though Sam couldn't have missed the jump in the god-forsaken heart monitor either. It was like trying to pick up a girl in a bar while wearing a frigging lie detector tied around his neck.

"What?" Sam asked, confused.

"You know," Dean grinned, "Since we're being random."

"Seriously, Dean," Sam said, almost begging, "Do you?"

"I don't know," Dean said, quite honestly, shrugging, scratching his ear, "You believe in aliens?"

"Not the same thing," Sam snapped.

"Tell that to the Trekkies."

"No, seriously," Sam insisted.

"I am serious," Dean sighed, "I think about God like a really well-drawn rumor. Like the aliens."

Sammy's disappointed. It stings and softens Dean in a very familiar and predictable way.

"What?" Dean asked irritably, "You need me to believe or something? Does believing get me to heaven, after all this crap?"

"I just wanted to know," Sam said with a shrug. He looked like he was fucking eight years old, and Dean wanted to shoot himself in the foot for causing all of Sam's fears and hesitations.

"Why?" Dean asked, more carefully.

It took Sam a long moment before he could answer.

"Because I want to know you're not scared," he answered, looking out the window at the sun.

"I'm not scared," Dean promised him and lied, "I'm less scared than the people who do believe--"

"Dean, come on..."

"I wish to hell there was a God," Dean snapped, "Is that fine with you, Mother Teresa?"

"How could you be a skeptic?" Sam asked, "With the things we see everyday (1)?"

"Exactly, we see them, we know they're real (1)!" Dean retorted.

"But if you know evil is out there, how could you not believe good's out there too (1)?" Sam pointed out.

Dean looked at him for a long moment, saying, "'Cos I know what evil does to good people (1)."

Sam shifted, uncomfortably. His eyes were jerky and nervous. This look was familiar to Dean. This look was Stanford all over again, Sam and his secret wants and secret ways to get them. Dean narrowed his eyes in suspicion.

"Maybe God works in mysterious ways (1)," Sam offered, his mouth dry.

Dean stared at him for a long time. No, Sammy wasn't talking, not just yet. Dean decided to wait it out (he still had_ some_ time after all), not ask, and justdiffuse the thick air with a joke.

"Is that what you learned in Stanford, Ivy? Ask people questions and then bite their heads off when they answer?"

" " "

* * *

" " "

Dean couldn't remember being dead, that's what scared the hell out of him. He could remember the pain that preceded it, the pain after. _God_, the pain. The memory of it was so accessible. All he had to do was breathe and there it came again. Easy as pie. Paralyzing, white hot pain, reverberating, throbbing, all-encompassing. It struck him all over and to the core. It was life amplified. _You remember the little things_. Damned if he did not think he could feel every nerve, every bone, every square inch of flesh.

_So easy to remember_, he thought, fiddling with the tubes that ran from his arm. He took a shaky breath, and pinched at one of them to block the flow, knowing it was the drug that kept the pain "manageable (_Who the hell are they kidding_?)." He closed his eyes and waited for the pain to come. It did, it was easy, he had said, and he held his breath and let it stay as long as he could. He could hear the heart monitor beginning to sound in alarm, complain at the strain it was giving his failing body. He let go, let the painkillers flow freely back into him and do their sick magic, before those crazy nurses gave him hell again for the stupid trick. He never thought he'd go like this, tanked up on drugs and not lasting two minutes without them.

Anytime the pain came he knew the electrocution happened _just like that_. So easy to remember. But try as he might, death did not hold a memory. As if life could just be snuffed out. Like you just got plucked out. No light, no warmth, no singing angels or devil's whips. You just ended.

_Maybe that's why there are ghosts who cling around here_, he reflected, _Maybe there really isn't anywhere decent to go. This. is. it._

_How disappointing_, he thought, wryly, _Yeah. What an understatement_.

_Better not tell Sammy_.

Sammy crossing his thoughts was as accessible as thinking about the pain. Not because he was Dean's pain-in-the-ass-little-brother (_Which he was, incidentally_) but... but because he was, well, _Sammy_. He was Dean's life, amplified and summarized. Everything that was the most beautiful and the most important. The brother he helped raise. The brother he kept safe. Leaving Sam was the most regretful thing he could think about in his life. Greatest achievement and greatest failure, all in one big package (_No wonder he's sooooo unfairly tall_).

Dean remembered the exact moment his life changed. His father had never used that tone and that look on him before, the way he sounded and looked when he shoved the Sammy-bundle into his older son's arms and told him to take him away, away somewhere safe. _That_ moment, everything changed, and he clung to Sam because afterward and all around them, nothing else made sense.

_I can't believe I'm leaving you here, alone. Wish dad was here. I know you're at each others throats a lot but at least you'd be distracted, ha!_

_God, Sam_, he thought, grimacing, blinking at the tears that sprang to his eyes, _I'm so fucking sorry_.

" " "

* * *

" " "

They let dying people get away with a lot of things, Dean reflected, as he placed his theoretically forbidden cellphone to his ear and dialed his father's number for the very first time since learning that his days were numbered. He caught the machine, the way he always did. He knew this would happen, of course, but a part of him had hoped, inescapably, that things would be different this time.

_Just this one time, damn it_...

"This is John Winchester. If it's an emergency, call my son Dean..."

_Who does Dean get to call though?_, he thought, with a sick, teary, self-deprecating grin.

"Dad," he paused, hesitating, finding his throat clogged, finding that this was as hard as thought it would be, knowing exactly why he'd kept himself from doing this for so long. He said nothing else, and hung up.

" " "

* * *

" " "

_Haunted Objects_

" " "

* * *

" " "

_Sammy's reading again_, he woke up thinking, and his brother's voice broke through the cobwebs in his head, like a ray of light stabbing through the depths of the sea, reaching the dark places where people just got lost until things like that told them which way was up again. One day, even that voice wouldn't be able to call him back, he knew, and he woke with that thought again, the same way he's been waking up for days now.

_I'm about to get snuffed out_, he thought_, Damn _that's irritating. But what the heck. He's pissed about it now 'cos he's alive enough to be pissed. When he's dead he won't – _can't_ care. The idea was mildly comforting. And also massively disappointing.

"Dean, you awake?"

He must have grunted out some form of assent, because he heard the smile in his brother's voice, and Sam's voice rang out a little bit more loud, a little bit more sure, and oddly enough, sounding almost proud of himself. Like it was his personal achievement, having his brother awake.

_Every night she tells the king a story...always trusting that his interest in her stories can keep her alive_...

_Too bad_, Dean thought glumly, _I don't have 1,001 nights_.

Tonight's topic of choice was haunted objects. Dean slipped in and out of awareness, but knew enough about his father's writings and the events themselves to fill in the blanks most of the time.

_I know this one_, he thought with certainty, when the discussion on haunted houses began. He fell asleep. The next thing he knew, Sam was talking about a possessed doll. According to his father, material objects that had significant places in the lives of people who were not at peace after death used these objects as links to the world, and functioned as extensions of the body, like remains. He knew this for a fact, and knew also that he's salted and burned his share of weird, haunted objects.

Sam said that Dad had written about burning a cowboy hat that amplified men's feelings of infidelity.

"That was weird," Dean murmured in agreement.

"What was that?" Sam asked.

_Damn you Sam_, Dean thought, _I can hear you when I'm half dead, the least you could do is strain yourself a little--_

He raised up his hand, heavily, and placed his oxygen mask down to his chin, "Weird."

"I know," Sam agreed, "What's the weirdest one you had to burn?"

Dean thought about it for a moment, tempted to fall back into sleep, except Sam just looked so earnest and expectant. He was feeling dizzy, and Sam must have seen something in his face, raised up the oxygen mask for his big brother before putting it back down.

"Thanks," Dean muttered, trying not to sound too annoyed by the gesture, "Black underwear."

Sam choked on a laugh, "Excuse me?"

"Who says 'excuse me,' dude?" Dean moaned, "God, I can't believe we're even related (3)."

"Save your breath, jerk," Sam chuckled, "And just answer the question."

"Any girl who wore it suddenly became irresistible," Dean said, coughing lightly, "Had to burn it when it fell on a very successful Black Widow, if you know what I mean, which was bound to happen. She was working her way through husbands and their money and killing them after. Ordinary psycho with supernatural panties. Nasty. God knows where the hell that's been..." he blanched, and shuddered, melodramatically.

"How the hell could she not have gotten past you?" Sam asked, jabbing at his brother's tendency to chase anything in a skirt, which no doubt would have been amplified by an objectively, supernaturally irresistible woman.

"I thought she was hot," Dean conceded, "But I tell you, I've never seen dad interested in any woman after mom before. Pissed the hell out of me more, I guess, and he looked miserable and_ eaten_, you know, like he was fighting it off and losing_. _Besides, I knew it was impossible. He wouldn'ta looked at anybody."

He took a deep breath, "Anyway, according to some legends, washing it hard core gets the powers out. Really _gross_ to think it's never been washed before, by the way, and I had no plans on hitting the laundry with that shit. And then there was another legend..." Dean chuckled, "Said its powers would be gone if a guy wore it. That was the most tempted I'd ever been to call you and ask for your help on a hunt. Man... so dad and I just burned the thing. Did the trick real nice."

Sam smiled a little, but he was looking sad again.

_Shouldn't have brought up dad_, Dean thought.

"I would haunt the Impala," Dean said.

"I know," Sam said, sounding clipped and pissed again, no doubt thinking back to that morning when they first found out Dean was dying, and Dean had joked about how Sam had to take care of his car, or else be haunted.

_That's not funny (1)._

_It's a little funny_ (1)Dean had said, coaxing a small smile from his brother, because he had always known what to do about Sam.

"If it was the other way around, you would probably haunt your laptop," Dean teased him, "Or for the heck of it, _I_ would. Put up porn every time you were trying to study."

" " "

* * *

" " "

Dean woke up, hours later, to find Sam asleep on a chair he had apparently pulled as close to Dean's bed as he possibly could.

_God, you're impossibly tall_, Dean thought, inanely, looking through Sam's seemingly splattered figure, limbs strewn out, head hanging. _Damn chair was not made with you in mind, bro_.

Their father's journal was on Dean's bed, next to his arm. He smiled a little as he reached for it, and he pulled himself up with a wince, as he sat up straighter to read through it a little bit. He was bored, and didn't feel like watching TV. Besides, he sure as hell didn't want to wake up Sam with the racket, since he looked beat.

He couldn't remember where he and Sam had stopped reading when he fell asleep. Having his brother around and yakking to or at him – _whatever - _was often enough to keep him calm and sane in this dreaded place and situation.

He began to flip through the well-used pages. Sam said he was turning dad's journal inside-out, and the internet, and, Dean guessed, everything else in the world, looking for something that could help Dean. Dean let him, even as knew there probably wouldn't be anything. In all the years he'd worked this job, there was nothing that could pull a guy from a Reaper's to-do list. A couple of dark jobs and black magic of course, but they seldom worked the way you wanted them, and they weren't supposed to be doing things like that anyway.

Dean flipped at the pages.

_What the --_

He noticed the torn edges of paper at the binding.

_This wasn't here before_, he thought, knowing beyond any shadow of a doubt that he'd have noticed if it was, since he raked this thing through when he was looking for a way to find his father.

He glanced up at Sammy suspiciously.

His heart beat a little faster, as he struggled to remember what could have been written there.

" " "

* * *

" " "

There were two _more_ pages missing from John Winchester's precious little leather-bound journal by the time Dean was through with it. Dean knew this very well because _this time around_, he was the one who had torn them out.

It was about three hours into finding out that his brother may have removed an entry from their father's journal. Three hours he spent, fighting to stay awake, trying to think about what Sam would want to keep from him. In their current situation, he could only think of one thing.

_Something that would help me, but would involve doing something nasty._

He racked his brain, trying to think about risky, dark things his father may have written about. There was this entry, he remembered, something about calling on a demon to make a deal... His father had also mentioned demon deals in his entry about suicide clusters after all.

He flipped at the pages and found what he was looking for, near the latter part of the book. If Sam was going through this thing systematically from the start, chances were he couldn't have gotten this far yet.

He glanced at his brother cautiously, and then tore the entry out without another thought. He shoved the entries into the cabinet by his bed, underneath some skin mags he had begged Sam for, in one of those days he was trying to annoy his brother into welcome distraction.

_That takes care of that_, he thought, satisfied, knowing that Sam wouldn't be getting anymore sick ideas into his crafty head.

_But what had Sam torn out_?

" " "

* * *

" " "

He did not ask Sam, no, not right away.

Dean let the line run long, he sat it out and waited. He was impatient by nature, but God knew, he was trained as a hunter by one of the best too. He knew when to jump and when to stay still.

The days wore on the way they always did. The suckers went by really undetectably fast, seeming so slow and suddenly it was done, and then the weeks left to you and the rest of your miserable life began to melt away.

Along the course of these days, something had changed between the brothers in a very palpable way. Sam's nails were bit to as short as they could go, as deep as his teeth could get to. His eyes were jerky, testy. Quick to annoyance and fire, as if he was just aching for Dean to break, just so he finally could.

Dean guessed Sam had finally realized that Dean had torn two pages out from the journal too, and was by now calling out Dean's silent bluff. Neither of them knew what the other was hiding, but _God_ were they hiding things or what. The staring game was on. They both moved forward, pretending they didn't know anything. Like a stick of dynamite with the fuse burning at both ends. It doesn't take a psychic to guess what happens next.

_Boom..._

They did whatever they usually did, talking (about everything except the things they really wanted to ask, of course), watching television, reading from their father's book.

On one of those days, the brothers read up on one of their father's favorite jobs. It was about a magician who really did know how to practice some magic. Simple stuff really, visual illusions, odd little sparks of fireworks, things like that. Impractical, useless, fluffy-bunny magic stuff. The man wasn't evil, wasn't using his skills unfairly. He was just a weird old man who did tricks for fun and alms.

"Why would you say that's dad's favorite?" Sam asked.

"Boggled the hell out of him," Dean said with a shrug, "Haven't seen him laugh that hard in awhile. He met the guy and just laughed and called him a knucklehead."

"Why's that?" Sam asked.

"A power is a power is a power, Sammy," Dean explained, "But all he wanted to do was do magic tricks on the street. We spent a good two weeks out there trying to figure out the angle, I mean, these demons are always in it for something, right? But zilch, man. Everyone in town knew him, some I bet even knew he was the real thing. But no one was giving him up. Besides, crime and disappearance rates there were even below par. The kids sure loved him. Their parents trusted him. We thought they were all crazy."

"And then you and dad just left?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," Dean said, adding, though he did not really mean it, "No kill, nothing. What a letdown."

"Guess you never can tell with these things," Sam said, his look pointed, "Some of them might even be helpful after all. You know, _not_ evil. You just have to give them a chance. If you need it, you just have to look at it and give it a fighting chance--"

"You really wanna get into this now?" Dean asked, his brows raising as he crossed his arms over his chest.

Sam stared at him for long, quiet moment, jaws set, chewing the inside of his cheeks as he weighed his options. He tore his gaze away, and took a deep breath.

"What's your favorite job?" he asked, his tone lightening dramatically, forcefully.

Dean narrowed his eyes in irritation, but again, bid his time and bit his tongue. He knew the answer to this one right away. It was so easy to call up in his mind.

"You know the one in Boston?" he replied, a smile already tightening his lips even before he could say anything else, "The one in the law office?"

It was a recent job, one of their first since Dean stole Sam from Stanford when they were looking for their dad.

"Boring," Sam said with a blanch, looking quite honestly surprised that his insane brother would enjoy that un-exceptional gig above all else, "Why?"

"Secretaries really are _hot_," Dean murmured, rubbing his chin in remembrance, "And we dressed up like janitorial, and all these women in suits and stilettos really did have a kinky thing about power and working guys. And the things you can do with a photocopying machine--"

"That was your favorite because of the women?" Sam asked, his eyes glistening. Dean's grin widened, because this was the first time in days that their conversation had turned honestly light.

"Not entirely," Dean admitted, "We couldn't figure out who the ghost was for the longest time. We were even about to salt and burn the wrong guy when my genius baby brother--"

"Shut up, Dean!" Sam laughed, "I get it, I do. It's your favorite, 'cos I screwed up."

"Dude that totally doesn't make any sense," Dean told him, "Are you listening to this or what? So we were about to salt and burn the body of this poor dead lawyer 'cos everyone was sure the ghost had to be this uber smart lawyer guy who died a few months back, right? And they were so sure because weird notes and corrections kept appearing on those... those thingies--"

"The Briefs," Sam filled in, "Appeals? Memorandum..."

"Whatever, dude," Dean continued, distracted, "Anyway, I suspected it was you doing that, but you did not fess up until we were about to burn the poor guy's body. Turns out it's just my stupid brother-janitor doing a little good-will-hunting-slash-elves-and-the-shoemaker action, and the ghost was someone else, I don't know, I forget that part."

"Why would that be your favorite?" Sam asked, frowning.

"I don't know, man," Dean shrugged, averting his eyes, "If we were somebody else... I thought about it, Sam. How much this job's cost us. We've lost so much. We've sacrificed so much (3)."

Dean scratched the back of his neck, feeling embarrassed and at the same time compelled to speak, "Especially you. I'm pretty sure I'd have been a total waste of breath in normal circumstances but man...Those days there, I saw you looking through those sheets of paper, totally smacking these Harvard wusses on their asses. Brilliant, bro. It was another life, like standing at your graduation all over again. You must be pissed as hell I dragged you back out here. I'm sorry, Sam, I really am. But I know that after all this shit is done, you can still be somebody so, ah...don't do anything that would change you so much you couldn't go back to being Joe College, huh?"

The dark heaviness returned to Sam's gaze again. It was a mixture of the sadness of the probable loss of his brother, the anger at Dean for tearing out a potentially life-saving page from their father's journal, and the wistfulness of the past.

"Promise?" Dean pressed.

Sam kind of just gave him a small smile, and therefore gave him absolutely nothing.

" " "

* * *

" " "

Dean gasped awake, and for a moment he thought he was still enmeshed in some sort of bad dream, except he was pretty damn sure the dark shadow across the wall really, truly meant that there was somebody standing there.

He tried to catch his breath. The heart monitor somewhere above his head was annoyingly echoing his efforts. Kind of reminded him of Sam, in afterthought, when Sam was a kid, trailing him around, repeating the things he was saying.

_Annoying_, he tried to convince himself.

"Who's there?" he rasped, pulling down his oxygen mask to make himself heard, and shakily lifting himself up to his elbows, trying to peer in the dark. It was off visiting hours, and the ICU held just him after that old guy at the corner kicked it a few days ago.

The shadow hesitated, at the very moment that Dean realized he knew precisely who would be standing there.

"Dad," he said, his face breaking wide open, he could feel it and could not stop it, how the guard just fell down and the tears welled and the lips broadened to a misplaced, schizophrenic grin. _Damn_ but this stupid body did not feel like it was his anymore. He immediately fought to sit up.

"Dean, no," came that earthy and achingly familiar voice, and uncharacteristically gentle though it had been, there was an order there too, the kind he could never deny, doubly now because he felt dastardly dog-tired.

John Winchester stepped back from the darkened corner and into the dim light from the window, resting his hip by his son's arm, reminding Dean of Sam. John's arms looked awkward on his sides too, again like Sam.

_Let me put you out of your misery_, Dean decided, offering his father his right hand to shake. Relived, his old man took it warmly, and Dean clung tight, grunting, "Dad, pull me up a bit, wouldja? Helps me breathe."

"Yeah," John agreed, leaning forward and pulling up his son with one arm and supporting his back with the other, sneaking in a hug while he was at it. He fluffed Dean's pillows behind him twice, before letting him down heavily.

"Thanks," he told his father with a wheeze. He hated this damn body. Fricking deserter. He gets so tired trying to get up that once that's done all he wants to do is lie back down again. Can anybody explain that?

"You better get another whiff of that thing," John said, nodding toward the mask.

"Yeah," Dean admitted, thinly. _God_, he hated being hurt around his father. John had that same worried look Sam got. The kind that just didn't know to pretend that everything was going to be fine.

"Sam called," John said, nodding insistently at the mask. Dean sensed the marine emerging so he put it back over his face for a breath, before putting it down again.

"He would," Dean shrugged, "He knows you're here?"

John looked at his son pointedly.

"You gotta let him know, dad," Dean sighed, though he did not sound surprised, "He'll hate you if he thinks you never came for..." he waved his hand casually around to encapsulate the entire situation, "For all this."

John shrugged, noncommittal.

"Gah," Dean said wearily, again waving his hand dismissively, he'll take care of that later. Turn it into a dying wish or something, he'll get it for sure.

"How 'ya feeling dude (2)?" John asked.

Dean shrugged, "Been better, right?"

"Yeah," John said with a wince, turning to look outside the moonlit window.

_I hate these guys_, Dean thought miserably, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that his father and brother were so similar sometimes that he might as well rehash whatever it was he had told Sammy that morning they found out he was dying.

"What can I say, dad," he said, his mouth dry, "It's a tough gig. I drew the short straw (1)--"

"I know the damn line, Dean," John growled, looking back down at his son again. His eyes had deepened, shades darker and layers of tears lower. He swiped at them with more than a measure of spite.

"I'm gonna wring your brother's neck," John said with a hollow laugh, "Last message he left me said you were already dead."

Dean chuckled, "Good old Sam, clever as always. Got you out here didn't he?"

"He's pissed as hell at me," John said, "But then again that's not news, is it?"

"Where've you been all this time?" Dean asked, shifting uncomfortably, trying to keep the hurt out of his voice.

"I'm coming damn close to finding the yellow-eyed demon," John replied, "I've never been so close."

"You ditched me (9)," Dean said, flatly, unable to help himself.

John set his jaws, "It was getting big, Dean. And too damn tight. Like he knows I'm coming for him. I can't think straight when it's this demon getting close to my family. I can't have you there."

"To keep me from danger, right?" Dean snapped, before breaking his rising anger with a sardonic grin, his dark humor appreciating the irony that he was left behind for his safety and now he was dying, "That's awesome."

"Well you asked," John said tightly, "And that was where I was before Sam called the first time. Since then I've been trying to look for a decent way to... to find some sort of a way to..." John's voice broke, and he paused to recover it, "I ran here when I thought I was too late."

"But you're still too late," Dean pointed out quietly, after a moment, reading his father's anguished face, "There is nothing anyone can do, right? I didn't think so. But Sammy's into his messianic thing again."

"What do you mean?"

"Thinks he can save me," Dean replied, "He read through your book, dad. He found something, and tore it out. I'm thinking he doesn't want me to find out about it. I'm thinking that only means it must be one of the dark stuff. You know which one I'm talking about?" Dean looked at his father long and hard. Almost daring him to lie.

John grimaced, "I might."

"If it's in your book you must have thought about it too," Dean guessed, "So ah... just to make it _abundantly_ clear, I don't want to live if either of you are thinking of pulling any of that shit. I would literally and seriously shoot myself back to the dead, or worse. You won't have a damn strand of hair to re-bury--" he coughed, put the oxygen mask over his face for a breath, and then went on again, "Now you know I know so don't even think about it.

"No dark stuff," Dean insisted, "Promise me, dad. You'd kill me if you did anything like that. You'd kill me ten times worse than this. Promise. You know I don't have anything left, so I won't stop asking 'til you say 'yes.'"

"Damn it, Dean--"

"Promise me," Dean said, breathlessly, "Promise. Not like one of those lame-ass conditional ones you used to con Sam and me with. Make it like a real one. Like the ones you said to mom."

"Dean--"

"Dad, please (6)," Dean begged, "I've done everything you ever asked me. _Everything_. I've given everything I ever had (2). I've never asked you for anything, dad--"

"I promise," John growled. Breathless pleas from a desperately hurt son were deafening, and there was just no saying no.

"Good," Dean said, after staring at his father for a long moment, trying to figure out if he was lying (deciding the possibility was downright_ gigantic_, but he couldn't do anything about that anymore)_, _then taking a breath from his mask before continuing, "So now that I got you, I only have Sam to worry about. One way I read is to crack a deal with a demon. I tore those pages out, just so's he doesn't get any stupid ideas. But he tore something out too, something that he didn't want me to see. Do you know what that could be?"

John's brows furrowed. As if he contemplated lying.

"Dad," Dean said, almost pleading, "Do you know what that could be?"

"Faith healer," John replied, clipped and backed against a damn corner, exactly where Dean wanted him.

Dean's brows rose in surprise, saying, "Nebraska."

Dean remembered that one. He and his father were just thinking of taking it on when suddenly, John Winchester decided to vanish. And Dean couldn't stand to do any job until he found his father first. All efforts to dissect that mystery ceased, stopped in its tracks by the only thing that could ever move Dean Winchester to distraction. The safety of his family. He was so distraught he even forgot all about it until now.

"Why wouldn't Sam want me to know about some quack in a tent?" Dean asked.

John's eyes darkened all the more, pulled into a memory he seemed temporarily lost in. Dean knew the look very well, the shell-shocked version of his father, the scarred soldier retreating into himself and his pitch-black thoughts.

"It's okay, dad (2)."

"Yeah," John scoffed, eyes lonely, "Yeah... well the guy in Nebraska's a bust."

"You went back there?" Dean asked.

"First place I went to when I found out about..." he unknowingly echoed his son's casual wave, "All this."

"He was a fake?" Dean asked.

"That's not important now," John shrugged, averting his eyes. He took a deep, shaky breath, "God, Dean."

_Don't I know it_...

And then in John Winchester's usual style, the worry merged with anger, "Water and electricity, Dean. Damn it."

Dean was pissed, but he kept his mouth shut. It was a dumb mistake, yes, dad, we know. _I'm paying already, all right_? God, and those f-ing machines started to beat in protest with his achingly restrained emotions.

John caught the machines, and then himself, and ran a hand through his hair. Dean watched him work through his unhappiness, all the while thinking how odd it was that this family never seemed to catch a decent break.

"I'm sorry," John said in a rushed breath, "You're a damn good hunter, son. I ain't supposed to be second-guessing what I would or would not have done if I was there. No one can tell you that crap."

Dean set his jaws, and let it go with a curt nod. Besides, what was there to say? And he was tiring..._God_, this body..._impossible, impossible little freak. Cooperate. Damnitt_.

"So I figured Sammy's gonna want to drag me to Nebraska in a few days," he said, "I know you're saying this guy's a fake but should I let him? Sam'll hate me if I don't give it a shot. But he'll hate himself more if he busts me out of here and I get killed out there on the road and the thing's a fluke. Dumbass will blame himself for sure--"

"I didn't say the faith healer was a fake," John told Dean.

Dean's brows furrowed, "He's not?"

_And you're not taking me there? What is this...?_

"Dad..." Dean began, tentatively. Sometimes he just had no idea what to do with his father.

"I'm sorry, Dean," John said, his voice breaking again, "God knows, I've never gone to a job wishing to hell I would fail, not until this one. I just up and kept wishing there was someone out there better than me, stronger, someone who could stop me, so I could say I tried my best, and failed."

"Dad, what are you talking about?"

"They were trading one life for another," John explained, "Playing God. Enslaved a reaper. For every person healed, someone else was killed, someone 'immoral.' I dug around there when I heard you were sick. Had to make sure this was the real deal, before we risked breaking you out AMA. I had to stop them, son. The moment I knew what was going on, I had to stop them. It was just _wrong_. But I swear to God I wished I would fail. I knew you and Sam would turn up at LeGrange's eventually. God, I wished so bad I would fail just so you could get to him. He would have been your only chance. And I had to stop them..."

Dean watched his father for a long, quiet moment, trying to decide how he felt about that.

_You knew he could save me. And you stopped him. Because it's wrong. Because it's our job. Screw your son, right? _

_Your happiness for all those people's lives? No contest, right (3)?_

The inanity of the situation was biting at him. He did not want to fucking die. He was pissed as hell about dying, and pissed as hell at his old man who was apparently willing enough to let it happen, if it meant saving other people's lives.

_It's a price Sammy would be willing to pay for me, I bet_, he thought, darkly, irrational and angry, _It's a price I _know_ I'd be willing to pay if it were the other way around. But not you, right, dad? Simply because it's wrong, right?_

_But why? Why is it our job to save these people? Why do we have to be some kind of hero? What about us, huh? Why do we have to sacrifice everything, dad (3)_?

But there was no answer to that, there never was. Winchesters seemed to just be made that way. There was no answer to the question because it was like asking someone how to breathe. Or why Dean liked women and cars and chocolate bars. No answer. This was just who they were.

"You did the right thing, dad," he said, his voice low and sure, his eyes earnest and begging to be looked at. His father needed to know this, John had to know that Dean did not blame him, or hate him.

"It doesn't feel like it (1)," John said, after a long moment of thought.

"It's not supposed to," Dean told him, coming to the strange realization that John Winchester had a very serious problem. His problem was that he was a great man, batting for great causes, and understanding that all that crap came at great costs. He could actually imagine his father just like one of those sad mythical figures standing victorious on a ravaged battlefield, alone. Grimy, lonely, triumphant last man standing, who lost everything but won the war.

_Kinda like Sam_, Dean thought, reflecting that Sam had that focused, winning look too. It didn't matter if the item of concern was Algebra or Soccer or some monster from somewhere. Sam gave everything of himself. It was how he looked when he left for Stanford too, the image permanently ingrained in Dean's mind. Sam's back as he walked to the bus that would take him to California. Wrinkled jacket, battered rucksack, old shoes and squared shoulders. Triumphant but lonely.

_I'm not like that_, Dean reflected, just as he knew for certain that he was fine with that. The things he wanted were simpler. He wanted his mom and his dad and his brother and a cookie-cutter home. He once said he'd rather die than live that white-picket-fence life. He was lying of course, because in the inverted, supernatural world of the Winchesters, to want beautiful, normal things was not only weird, it was much, _much_ harder to get.

"I'm sorry, son," John said.

"You shouldn't be," Dean assured him, "I get it, I do."

"You always have, Dean," John said, shaking his head in dismay at himself. He hesitated, and then sat by his son's arm.

"They taking good care of you here?"

"The nurses aren't hot," Dean replied with a slight smile, "But there is one who can talk really dirty. Said she put herself through school working a phone sex line."

John chuckled, "Your mother will wanna soap that barracks-mouth."

"Nah, she'll like me," Dean said confidently, "I'm sure."

The brief light in John's eyes vanished, realizing all that what Dean had said meant. That his son was dying and meeting up with his dead mother and introducing to her the man that he had become.

"She'll like Sammy more," John teased, cutting off his thoughts before they went deeper, "He has that honest look."

"She always liked wildflowers, dad," Dean said, chuckling and coughing, "Not pansies. I'll be her favorite."

John's brows furrowed, "You look beat, sport."

He was. Has been since they started and for days before that but damned if he was going back to sleep while his father was here.

"Last time I closed my eyes on you," Dean said, "You left."

"I will this time too, kiddo."

"I know," Dean said, "That's why I can't (4). Stay awhile, dad. Please. And Sam will want to see you."

"I can't stay, Dean," John said gently, "I don't want to put you and Sam in any more danger than I already have. If I were thinking straight I wouldn't have even gone here. But I had to see you."

Dean stared at his father for a long time, contemplating begging, and using his illness for leverage. But he understood how hard this was for his father too. He wished he didn't, but he did.

_Lucky me_ (3), he thought miserably.

"Don't be alone too long, dad," Dean told him, wearily, "I know I'm totally useless but Sam... he's really good, dad. Give him a shot. Let him help you once in awhile, huh? And he needs you."

_I need you._

_We are stronger as a family (11)_...

"I'll stay 'til you sleep," John told him, quietly.

"I'll stay awake 'til I'm dead," Dean joked, his eyelids already beginning to feel heavier.

"I don't doubt it."

Dean's eyes began to flutter close, but he fought them off with a sudden thought, "You need to leave me something."

"What?" John asked, rightfully confused.

"When I wake up tomorrow," Dean said, "I need to know this wasn't a dream. Please, dad. Leave me something. Something unmistakable."

John, after some consideration along the length of which Dean thought he would fall asleep, reached from the back of his neck and drew out his precious dogtags.

"Not that, dad..." Dean breathed, even as he knew he's had his eye on that thing since he was eight years old, "You love that thing."

John removed one of the two tags from the chain, and pressed it to Dean's palm. "The two's supposed to go together son. But I got one now, and you got the other."

"I'll get it back to you," Dean promised, closing his fingers around his precious new possession, closing his eyes as he grinned and muttered, "But you still should have left me the one with the chain. Chicks dig that."

"You're an idiot."

Dean smirked at his father, before his eyes opened again, looking deeper and darker. "You know who's a bigger idiot?"

"Who?"

"Sammy," Dean sighed, "What am I gonna do with him?"

"Same thing I've been asking myself since the two of you were born," John said with a small smile, "You know, he was the most skeptical-looking baby I've ever laid eyes on."

Dean snickered, "That would be him..."

"Look after him, dad," he said after a wistful moment, his voice drowning to a murmur as he began to fall asleep, "Promise. Promise me you will never, _ever_, let him do anything I'd regret. Take care of Sam."

John found that this was a much easier word to give.

"I promise," he said, without thought, without doubt, in truth and love and absolute, simple purity.

" " "

* * *

" " "

The next morning, Sam did not visit him at all. Dean knew then that his brother must have been busy preparing for Nebraska, and he was absolutely certain of it when he opened his eyes and gasped awake and sensed another shadow standing in the corner of his room at the end of visiting hours that night.

"You people," Dean groaned, "Trying to give me a heart attack--"

Sam ignored the complaint, and stepped forward silently, his face set and cold and _decided_. Dean has been dreading this, oh yes.

"Dean," he said, "I called up one of dad's contacts. There's this specialist in Nebraska who can help you."

_Specialist, huh?_, Dean could have laughed, _Nice euphemism, you lying bastard (1). Absolutely awesome_.

"Yeah?" Dean asked, pulling down his oxygen mask to beneath his chin, "Is that what they call them now?"

Sam's brows furrowed, "What?"

"Faith healers, Sammy," Dean sighed, taking a breath from the mask before putting it down again, "I know what's in the missing pages and no. We're not going."

"Why not?" Sam asked, "I looked him over, Dean. He's supposed to be the real deal."

Dean stared at him in a long, measuring way. Again, his heart picked up and he winced when Sam looked worriedly at the monitor. Hi hands were so damn cold, and for a long moment, he couldn't trust himself to speak. He knew, flat out, that his brother was willing to kill for his life. This realization was filling him with frigid fear.

"Sam...," he said, tentatively.

What was he supposed to say about that? God, he was scared. Scared for his brother's desperation, scared for his brother's soul. Easily, he knew that if their places were reversed, he wouldn't hesitate to die for Sam and kill for him. But this was not what he wanted for his brother, no. If there was something about him he never wished Sam would emulate, it was that blinded judgment.

_You are not blackening out that soul on my watch and especially not on my account, Sammy_...

True, it would just be easy to tell Sam that whatever was in Nebraska doesn't work anymore because of what their father had done, but Dean needed to know that Sammy was capable of saying no to this, of knowing it was wrong, of knowing where to draw the line. Dean needed to know that he was leaving a Sam who was capable of making the right decisions, stick to that same great path their father was walking.

_Don't be like me, Sammy_...

"They heal people and kill others in their place," Dean told his brother with simple, earnest quiet, "No one's going to die for me, Sam."

"We can ask them to pick someone who deserves to die," Sam filled in quickly, desperately, as if he'd already thought of that and convinced himself, "A criminal somewhere, something like that."

"You don't mean that," Dean said, "I know it doesn't seem fair, and I wish I could explain, but Roy is not the answer, I'm sorry (1). What's happening to us is horrible. But what are you gonna do? Let somebody else die to save me? You can't play God (1)."

Sam set his jaws, started shaking his leg in anxiety. Cat caught the lawyer's tongue and fricking ate it. It was hard to defend something you knew was dastardly wrong.

"Many more people deserve to die than you," Sam said darkly, "And someone will be killed anyway, it might as well be your life that's saved. I don't care who dies, they can pick me for all I care but--"

"_That_ I will _not_ have," Dean growled, "I'd rather die in the worst possible stinking way, Sam. If you do any shit like that, I swear to God and anyone else listening that I'm dragging you back here and everything will be ten times worse. So don't even go there. Leave this be. You gotta let me go, bro. And no more crazy ideas like this."

"You're my brother, Dean and no matter what you do I'm gonna try and save you (7)," Sam snapped.

Dean took a shaky breath, fearing the cold, determined darkness that was simmering in his brother's eyes, "Listen, Sammy. I'm not blind. I see what you're going through with this whole deal, me going away and all that. But you're gonna be okay (7)."

"You think so?"

"Yeah," Dean replied confidently, "You'll get over it. I want you to know I'm sorry. I' sorry for putting you through all this, I am (7). But you'll be fine."

"You know what, Dean?" Sam retorted, "Go screw yourself (7)."

"What?"

"I don't want an apology from you," Sam said, "And by the way, I'm a big boy now i can take care of myself (7)."

"Oh, well excuse me," Deam scoffed.

"So would you please quit worrying about me?" Sam asked, "I don't want you to worry about me, Dean. I want you to worry about you (7). Now would you please. _Please_. Just let me do this?"

"Listen to yourself, bro," Dean said, lowly, sounding anguished, "'Cos to me, it sure sounds like you seem less and less worried about offing people. It used to eat you up inside (8)."

"And what has that gotten me?"

"Nothing," Dean conceded, "But it's just what you're supposed to do, okay? We're supposed to drive in the freaking car and freaking argue about this stuff. You know, you go on about the sanctity of life and all that crap (8)."

"Wait," Sam asked, disbelieving, "So you're mad because I'm starting to agree with you (8)?"

"No," Dean replied, "I'm not mad, I'm...I'm worried, Sam. I'm worried cos you're not acting like yourself (8)."

"Yeah you're right, I'm not," Sam admitted, boldly, "I don't have a choice (8)."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Look, Dean," Sam explained, "You're leaving, right? And I gotta stay here in this crap hole of a world alone so the way I see it, if I'm gonna make it, then I gotta change (8)."

"Change into what?"

"Into you," Sam said, with finality, chilling Dean to the bone, "I gotta be more like you (8)."

_No one ever accused you of being an underachiever before, Sammy..._

"Lofty ambition," Dean teased him, softly, trying to court a smile because he was robbed of words. Sam did not indulge him this time.

"You'd do the same for me, Dean and you know it," Sam said.

"No I won't," Dean lied, "I'd draw the line here."

"You wouldn't draw the line anywhere," Sam said, "You know it."

"Don't flatter yourself--"

"You're lying," Sam said, cutting him off, "And you may as well drop it cos I could see right through you (9)."

"And how do you know that?" Dean snapped.

"Because I know you (9)," Sam said, plainly, simply and Dean realized, quite tragically, truthfully.

"Really?" he asked, his mouth dry as he tried to keep his sarcasm, keep his game face on.

"Because I've been following you around my entire life," Sam said earnestly, employing that old trick of his, "I mean I've been looking up to you since I was four, Dean. Studying you, trying to be just like my big brother. So yeah, I know you. Better than anyone else in the entire world. And I can't blame you (8). It's just... You know you'd do this for me, Dean. You know you would. So let me. Just... just let me."

"You know it's wrong, Sam," Dean said wearily, "You know it is."

"I don't care--"

"Then tell me this," Dean said, "Let's go your way then, bro. Let's flip this around. If you were in my position, wouldn't you do everything you could to stop me from doing what you're about to do right now?"

"Dean," Sam said, achingly, stepping forward, sitting by his brother's bed, grabbing his hand--

_Pulling out all the stops, are you_? Dean thought, _Sorry kid, but no. This is one thing I'll be glad to deny you_.

"Dean..."

"You know you would," Dean said.

Sam blinked at his tears, already resolved to find a different tack, "Then what about... about that other thing? The thing you tore out?"

"That," Dean grimaced, "Will be worse."

"Let me look at it," Sam insisted, "Even if it's dark stuff, it can at least give me a good starting point, Dean, I swear, just let me take a look."

Dean looked at his brother for a long moment.

_No,_ he knew, would be the best answer to this one. Once the demon deal and how it works gets into Sam's head, it would be too tempting, too accessible, and once Dean releases that information, he wouldn't be able to stop his brother if Sam did choose to push through with it.

He took a deep shaky breath, and let his eyes drift around the room, aimlessly, begging for a weary sleep to take him over.

"Damn it, Dean," Sam growled, shaking him lightly, "Just tell me where it is."

"Tired," Dean bit out, not really lying, as he let his eyes drift close, "We can talk about this... tomorrow, Sammy."

"Good fucking night, bro," Sam growled at him, angry of course, exactly the way Dean had dreaded he would be. An ailing Dean was not in a magnanimous mood either.

He opened one eye, and then the other. Anger was a fuel, damned but it was. "Say that again."

Sam set his jaws, looking tempted as hell to get into this. But scared enough to glance at the heart monitors.

"Look at me," Dean snapped at him, "And to hell with that shit. Get mad at me, Sam, scream, whatever. I'm not handicapped. And I sure as hell ain't dead yet."

"Tell me where the damn sheet is."

"I ate it," Dean spat at him, "You can check at the autopsy."

Sam's face crumbled for a few seconds, hating that word, despising the very idea of what lay at the end of this road, until his anger reclaimed him even deeper, and he just set his jaws and headed for the nightstand. Without care or regard or respect for that the tiny cabinet that now represented everything Dean had left, he threw it open, and tossed out a miscellany of things. Skin mags, car mags... Dean watched the incredulous expression that battled Sam's furious expression as he drew out a _soap opera guide?!_, as if he was trying to stay angry. Sam snatched up small packets of salt (gathered from Dean's meal trays; it was a quirky habit), a small cross and a rosary, breath mints, a pack of gum, his wallet...

Sam tore into the wallet like a madman. He'd never gone through Dean's things like this. Angry, disrespectful, careless and desperate. Dean was getting pissed at the intrusion, but bit his tongue and let Sam work through his anger and helplessness.

Fake credit cards, fake insurance, fake identification, real hustling money, unfortunately not a lot. Receipts from a few days ago, and some from three years ago, God knows why. And then Sam took a shaky breath, more a sigh, really, and Dean knew he had found the pictures.

One was of the four Winchesters, complete, in happier times. One was of the two brothers as kids. One was of the three hunters by the Impala, taken because Dean wanted to have a picture of the car to drag around and take a look at every time he was lonely.

"Damn you, Dean," Sam said, his voice wavering.

_God, you look young_, Dean thought, _I'm so so sorry, Sammy. I'm so sorry. I'm a sorry fucking idiot all right..._

"We, uh..." Sam said, taking a deep breath, trying to reclaim himself, "We shoulda taken more."

"What?" Dean asked confused.

"Went all around this country," Sam said, "We should have taken more pictures. Last one we took could have been mugshots, instead."

"Yeah," Dean agreed, smiling wearily.

Sam stared at him for a long moment, before sitting back down on his brother's bed, "You can't leave me here, Dean. Tell me. What do I have to do...?"

_I'm gonna die (1)._

_You can't stop it...(1)_

"I'll tell you where it is," Dean said, warily, "But you gotta promise something first."

"I won't do it, I get that," Sam said, quickly, earnestly, "I promise. I'll just use it as a starting point--"

"No dark stuff," Dean emphasized, "Nothing I would hate."

Sam frowned. That might be trickier. "Okay..."

"You're lying," Dean growled.

Sam didn't deny it. "How could I not try to save you, Dean? If there was a way...?"

"Sam..." Dean sighed, rubbing a hand over the bridge of his nose, "What the hell am I going to do with you, huh? In that case then the answer is a big, resounding, Fuck. Off. You ain't getting at it."

Sam's eyes lit up, as if in an idea, before looking at Dean determinedly again. This was Sam in his most effective, Dean noted, not being a stranger to the expression. It looked like one of those comics with the light bulbs in the thought balloons.

"Dean," Sam began, looking earnest again, "What if it will be important one day? What if this is something I'll need to know in the future (9)? It's your job, right? As my big brother (9)--"

"Fuck off--"

"Dad wrote it down because it was important," Sam insisted, "It might save my life one day. I can't just not-know it until forever..."

Dean's eyes almost crossed with irritation. And defeat. Sam was being open-faced manipulative but he was also speaking the truth. Their father had written these things down as references. He'd hate to blindside his brother, fail to prepare him for something very dangerous in the future.

_I can just tell him before I die_... he thought, tentatively and that ended there. Fact was, he could die at anytime at this point; tonight in his sleep, tomorrow, in five minutes because he was so annoyed...

Besides, if Sam knew about demon deals even after his death, Sam could still do that and bring him back. Maybe it was best to tell him now, and then convince him not to go through with it.

"You are a conniving fucking asshole," Dean muttered at him. His younger brother grinned at him shamelessly.

"I was preparing to do this for a living, you know," Sam said.

"Damn it," Dean muttered, running a weary hand over his face, _God_, he should have just fallen asleep, "First thing you tossed out was the skin mag, geek boy. Last place you'd look when you're sensible, first place you'd look when you're lonely. That's where the paper is. And put it back in the book, while you're at it. Put yours back too. In your wallet, I bet. Have some originality, for chrissakes..."

He went on muttering as Sam practically dived at the magazine and flipped straight to a centerfold of last year's Miss December. He tossed the magazine aside and speed-read through their father's writing.

"Well?" Dean pressed, after a long moment. Sam was a fast reader, and looked as if he was just thinking and stalling.

Sam took a deep breath, and looked up to meet his brother's eyes head-on. "We can do this. Ten years is not a bad deal. And we'd have ten years to figure out how to get out of it--"

"No one ever has," Dean told him flatly, "You're not doing this, Sam. All right?"

"If anyone can do it..."

"No!" Dean said, his voice the loudest that he's heard it since he was admitted here. The machines around him were shouting too. "You'll kill me, Sammy, I swear to God," he gasped, trying to sit up straighter, "You are not trading your soul for me, I won't have it. You'll kill me, Sammy--"

"Damn it," Sam said, gripping his brother by the shoulders, trying to calm him down as he clawed, and gasped, and fought off his brother, "Dean..."

"Sam..." green eyes turned liquid, something that disarmed Sam in an unmatched way, "Sam..."

"Breathe easy, dude," Sam said, glancing up in relief at the nurses and doctors who had jogged into the room upon hearing the alarms.

Dean's grip on his arm was vise-like.

"I can't," he gasped, "I can't fucking do anything... anything but beg you, Sammy. I can't... do anything but... but beg you--"

Sam blinked at the tears in his eyes, and pulled his brother into a tight embrace, "All right," he said, his voice low and husky, "All right, you get your way, damn it."

Dean was fairly sure Sam was telling the truth, for now. So he sagged against his brother's arms, exhausted beyond measure, and satisfied, also _for now_. He also knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was a promise Sam had every capacity to break, later. He'll convince himself Dean had coerced him unfairly into it, or something lawyer-ly like that. Dean had to come up with a different plan, especially because his dad also sounded like Sam tonight, which was _truthful-for-now_. Dean did not doubt that they meant to keep their promises at the time they gave them, but it might not hold true after. What had Sting sang before?

_I never made promises lightly, and there have been some that I've broken_, yeah...

And then suddenly, an idea popped into his head. He always knew Sam was smarter, but he had his moments, _oh yes_...

He remembered suddenly how his father had looked, when he asked him to take care of Sam.

_"I promise," he said, without thought, without doubt, in truth and love and absolute, simple purity._

_I know what to do_, Dean decided, almost smiling_, You don't want to take care of yourselves, huh? I'll make you take care of each other_...

"Sam," Dean said, his voice raspy but his tone strong and very calm, as he let himself be pulled away by strangers' gentle hands, away from his brother, "You gotta do something for me."

"What?"

"You gotta take care of dad, man," Dean said, as he was pressed back down to bed, "Take care of dad. Don't let him do anything crazy, when he gets wind of all this. Find him, Sam. Take care of him, don't let him fight this thing alone, huh?"

Dean cheered inside, when Sam's tone and expression matched his father's to a t.

"I promise."

TO BE CONTINUED in a final chapter...

(1) Faith

(2) In My Time of Dying

(3) What Is and What Could Never Be

(4) A Very Supernatural Christmas

(5) Home

(6) Devil's Trap

(7) Red Sky at Morning

(8) Malleous Maleficarum

(9) Fresh Blood

(10) Dream a Little Dream

(11) Dead Man's Blood


	3. Chapter 3

Author: Mirrordance

Title: Things We Know

Summary: A salute to the classic episode Faith... would Sam still have taken a dying Dean to Reverend Roy LeGrange even if he knew that to save his brother would be at the cost of a stranger's life? Alternate ending. Warning: Character death and language.

**Note**:

This is my first fic for Supernatural, and will be posted in 3 parts. Standard disclaimers apply. "Things We Know" is an homage to my favorite episode "Faith," and almost like a 'love song' for the entire series. Many of my favorite lines from the show will be recognized by fans as having been pulled from various episodes and then shoved into the fic's alternate situations (the reason why will be explained later). These will be attributed in the footnotes.

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Things We Know

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**Chapter 3: John**

John Winchester could not stray very far, not as long as his eldest son breathed. He wanted to. God knows it would not have been the first time he had left behind Dean somewhere in pursuit of something or other. Obviously, this time was different.

He couldn't remember the last time he had seen his son so openly ill or hurt. A father never forgets the first time, of course, but the last one of many hurts Dean had taken over the years must have been so long ago, or, or perhaps, so well-concealed, that he could not for the life of him remember the circumstances around it.

The memory was so alien that he could not believe that he was looking at his son upon first sight of him at the hospital. Sunken, dark-rimmed eyes, gray-pale skin that drew out those freckles he hated as a child. He was lying slumped, wilted, not as if he were drunk or lazy (familiar sights to a father of course), but just... just because he was barely there, anymore. Like a part of him had already gone ahead, like he was already half away from this life and--

_Thin_, he thought, cutting off his bleaker thoughts, _Dean looked thin_.

_Uncharacteristic_ was an understatement, of course.

John reflected that it wasn't his fault he thought of Dean that way, since he was certain it was Dean himself who had cultivated that image, after all these years looking after his family. He got thrown around and spat out and he always came out kicking somehow, every time, kicking and throwing punches and running that mouth.

He hung around the hospital for a bit, wearing a uniform from janitorial in the mornings, and then the security guard's at night. It was John manning the security cameras that night Sam Winchester snuck into the hospital off-visiting hours to try and convince his brother to go see a faith healer in Nebraska.

John watched Sam thoughtfully, in the soundless black and white of the gritty, pixelated screen. His sons were damned good, but always have tended toward the reckless side when they were desperate. And every bit of movement in Sammy was pretty damn desperate by now.

John trailed Sam's image as he walked past the corridors, his image jumping from screen to screen, until he vanished into Dean's room.

John leaned back in his seat, contemplating making an appearance for one tempting breath, before settling down, not wanting to be any more of a danger to his sons than he already was.

He wondered what they were talking about. He wondered how Dean was going to get out of a useless trip to Nebraska. He wondered if they were talking about him. He wondered if they were talking about demon deals. He wondered if Dean could successfully wrangle a promise to behave out of Sam, as he had done (more or less) with his father.

All of fifteen minutes later, his heart jumped in his throat when doctors and nurses began running toward Dean's room. He sucked in a breath, waited a full minute and was turning away to start running there too, when suddenly, Sam emerged from the room, looking devastated and world-wrecked.

_Dead...?_ his blood turned cold in his veins, like they just stopped and froze. His hands were shaking, like they were freezing. He couldn't think, couldn't breathe. It was the second time he'd had to think of Dean as... as...

The doctors were talking to Sam. He looked calmer, and kept sneaking glances in the room.

_Alive, _then, John decided, even as his mind thought, _Yeah but for how long, huh...?_

Sam didn't bother sneaking out the way he had come in, but was escorted out by a sympathetic-looking nurse. He wouldn't be banned or punished for breaking in to see his dying brother, that was for sure. John trailed his image in the security cameras, until he had gone on his way.

The whole voyeuristic incident reminded him of Stanford, of how he and Dean would drop by once in awhile and just look in on his prodigal son. _Look but don't touch_...

The distance they had to keep from Sam ensured the show would be soundless too, just like it had been tonight. Whenever Dean was feeling melancholy about the whole scenario, he would cover up their bleak thoughts with joke after joke of hilarious things that the people could be saying, even mimicking a very unjust impersonation of his brother. One time, an apparent freshman was asking Sam for directions, and Dean dubbed over their conversation and turned it into a very casual sexual instruction session. John had growled at him in dismay, but the irreverence got them through those dark days, making it easier for John to walk away, and just let Sam be. This wasn't a habit Dean had lost over the years.

_"I'll get it back to you, dad," Dean promised, closing his fingers around his precious new possession, falling asleep as he grinned and muttered, "But you still should have left me the one with the chain. Chicks dig that."_

John smiled tightly, even as tears shivered in his eyes.

" " "

He marveled at how it was that anything that had any part of him could come out so shiny and _pretty_. This was the first thing he thought upon seeing his eldest son, with his dark blond hair and green eyes and cheeky grin. He lifted up little Dean, speculatively, and turned him over once, twice, inspecting him.

"Checking for factory defects?" his wife teased him. He ignored he quip, focused on the task of looking Dean over. Mary took no offense whatsoever, and just watched her husband fondly, a corner of her lip turned upward, laughing at him inside. He suspected the blasted baby was doing the same thing.

"You sure he's mine?" he had growled, teasing his wife.

Dean peed on his hands, and just grinned at his father.

"Oh yes," his wife said, definitively, as she laughed.

Dean grew up hardy, almost in defiance of his face, which John appreciated. No Winchester was growing up a pretty boy, if he had anything to say about it. Sam, on the other hand, seemed set to defy him even on that trivial respect. He grew up with earnest eyes. Kid was tailor-made to be a con-man except he also had an inconvenient decency to go with the face.

Strangely enough, though, the more time the three Winchester men spent on the road together, it was Sammy who had emerged to be more like John. Dean had his father's drawl, his father's walk, his father's fighting flair and driving skills. He loved his father's music and wore his father's clothes. But it was carefully cultivated, sometimes almost contrived, as if he was unconsciously making up for traits he did not share with his father.

Sam, on the other hand... they had the same dark features, for starters, but more than that, they had the same relentless drive, the same thick skull. Dean ran his mouth a lot, but the kid's bark was much louder than his bite. He was actually much more flexible, much more easy-going. Sam and John though, was another matter altogether. _Nothing_ could stand in their way. As Ted Nugent once sang, _A house gets in the way... I'll burn it down._

_Ironic_, John thought with a frown. Thoughts of burning houses and depressed Winchesters just did not go together.

The inevitable happened as it was wont to and John and Sam's wants diverged, and the two thick skulls turned into the proverbial irresistible force and immovable object. Sam, unstoppable in going after a life that was outside of hunting, and John, unshakable in his determination to find his wife's killer, had gone head-to-head. The so-called irresistible force paradox asks what would happen if the irresistible force met the immovable object, and Dean became the answer.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, as some would say, Dean was flattened to an almost absence. John was an obsessed bastard, yeah, but he was far from blind or stupid. He knew what he was, could not help that, but he also knew what he was doing to his son.

_Dean's car? Dad's (10)._

_Dean's favorite leather jacket? Dad's (10)._

_Dean's music? Dad's (10)_...

Dean had become dad's clone and Sammy's shadow. He was John's wife and Sam's mother. He became the one-man band, the entertainment center and general source of distraction and levity.

Everything that he was had been defined by the two strong-willed men that surrounded him. Son. Brother. He was a comedian when they were unhappy, referee when they were fighting. He molded himself against the rock and the hard place to survive, and what came out was, John realized, a young man who would both live and die for him and Sam, but seemed to want nothing for himself. His one selfishness was that he was deathly afraid of being left alone. As if he was nothing without everybody else.

He remembered what Dean was like, after Sam left for Stanford. For a long time, Dean had kept a dogged, jerky, watchful eye on his father, as if he was afraid he'd go away too (which he did, eventually). Every job had to be perfect. His father had to be safe. He was so careful he got reckless. And God knew, the moment John had left, the kid up and leaves everything and then goes looking for Sam.

_Has Dean been dead a long time...?_

_Burnt up along with Mary after all...?_

_I've done everything you ever asked me, _Dean had begged_, "_Everything_. I've given everything I ever had. I've never asked you for anything, dad..._

How the hell could he have said no?

And at the same time, his father's heart berated him too, _How the hell could you have said yes _(speaking for rocks and hard places)?

_I would sell my soul for you_, he thought, experimentally, before realizing he was thinking about a literal, actionable truth and that unlike Sam, he did not need a damn notebook page to know what he had to do to succeed.

_I've done everything you ever asked me... _Everything_. I've given everything I ever had... _Dean's breathless voice echoed in his ears.

_I can really, truly sell my soul for _you, he thought again, and then_ Decided._

" " "

" " "

As soon as John Winchester makes up his mind, a deed is as good as done. The thing about this deed in particular, however, was a possible redundancy issue. Meaning... of the two promises he made Dean the night before, one concerning himself and the other to look after Sam, the latter he intended to keep, at the very least. All in all, a fifty percent rate ain't bad, after all.

So... he had to make sure that if he was selling his soul in order to save Dean, Sam wouldn't do the same thing. It would make for one fucking _lucky devil_ who could grab two Winchester souls for the price of one, after all, just 'cos they didn't _coordinate_.

How to do that without alerting Sam to his presence was another matter altogether. Without knowing yet what to do, he settled down in the sleepy little town for a little while, and resolved to keep an eye on Sam, make sure he doesn't do anything crazy, until he figured out what to do. It wasn't very hard; watching Sam from the shadows was not something he was unused to.

He watched Sam primarily through hospital security cameras, of course, since Sam spent every breath of the visiting hours with his brother. It was odd, though, how one day Sam entered the hospital premises and looked up at the security cameras, straight through, as if he knew he was being watched. John's breath caught; it felt like the first time his son had looked straight at him in years. Sam walked away, and he let the feeling go.

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" " "

_Strange_, John thought, watching Sam shuffle out of a grocery store with a bag of groceries. He realized that there were some mundane tasks he had never seen Sam do, said tasks having been relegated to him or Dean back when the three of them hunted together.

While he had seen Sam drive the Impala when he was younger, he had never seen him drive it like he was driving it now... less reverence, more practiced ease, but same heavy foot on the breaks. The car was such an extension of Dean, that it looked odd, moving with Sam at the wheel.

He had also never seen Sam buy groceries. Had never seen Sam cook. Just small, strange things...

_Did I miss you boys grow up_, he wondered.

Dean driving the car, buying groceries and cooking hadn't been as strange, that was for sure. Dean took to the tasks as if they were expected of him, a spin-off of the '_Look after Sammy'_ mantra he was living by. They hadn't been any indication to John of growth, or maturity. These were just things that were always there somehow, and he'd hate to think that Dean had been a grown up already at, say, age eight (though this was also possible). The first time he had looked at his eldest son truly as a grown-up, as an equal, was that first time Dean defied him, "Because you know I'm right," and he _believed_.

Dean was fifteen and fucking up high school, but getting better and better at the gig. John came to rely on him more and more, expanding his tasks, giving him more involvement in planning and deciding. Sam, on the other hand, was getting better and better at research. The kid's earnest face and eager, wildly-perceptive questions had strangers helping him out at libraries and schools, and eventually, he would be coming up with insights and answers that even John did not have. He also usually went home with a cache of food or candy from his new friends. John had raised a soldier and a con-man. The Winchesters were on a roll.

John was walking wounded coming off a hunt, and dove prematurely headfirst into the next one. He would have gotten himself killed if Dean hadn't popped up at the last moment, against orders to stay 'home (a motel somewhere)' and prepare for a history final, his final shot at making the grade that year. Two minutes later Sam pops out too, and from the sour look on Dean's face, Sam had also gone against _Dean's_ orders to stay home as well.

John was bleeding and biting his son's head off, as Dean took over the wheel of the car (under-aged and illegal, but when did that bother them) with set jaws, taking it all in. Once in awhile, he would glance threateningly at the rear view mirror at Sam, as if promising him a similar scolding was in store for him later too.

John was still running his mouth when they reached the motel and Dean was patching him up, and Dean was still quiet, not looking him in the eye. But there was something simmering in his eyes, John realized now, in afterthought.

_"Don't you have anything to say for yourself?" John had asked him, exasperated._

_Dean looked up at him, eyes piercing and astute. "No sir."_

_"Why the hell not?"_

_Dean looked at him for a long moment, before going back to stitching up his father's arm. John bit his tongue after that, knowing precisely what the silence meant._

Because you know I'm right_, Dean might have said. But he didn't. Stubborn bastard that John was, he'd have eaten through that statement in indignation. But in silence, he let it go, because it was the truth. His weariness kind of just sank in at that point, and he closed his eyes and let the anger run off of him in a breath. When he opened them again, he noticed that similarly, the tension had left Dean's body, and the piercing gaze had softened to worry, and suspicion._

_"You all right?" Dean asked, gruffly._

_"Remember the first time I told you about," John waved at their general situation, "All this?"_

_"What about it?" _

_"Didn't it ever cross your mind that your old man was just crazy?" John asked him, with a self-deprecating chuckle._

_Dean's brows furrowed. The answer was simple and heartbreaking._

_"No."_

_"Why not?"_

_"I know you," Dean said, finishing up the bandage with a flourish. He was also very, very good at patching up his father in more ways than one. "Did you ever think you were crazy?"_

_"God knows everyone said so," John said with a grunt, "God knows I wished to hell I was. That everything was all right. That there was nothing sitting in the dark. But... no."_

_"I didn't think so," Dean said, asking again, "You all right?"_

_"Yeah," John said, "You did good, Dean. But don't think you can make a habit of this."_

_Dean smirked at him, the look warming his eyes. He looked like his mother. _

Ever since that night, his back never felt cold again, having Dean there to cover it.

John has not changed his mind about that... wishing all this was in his head, wishing he had lost his mind instead of the reality that he was living in. He'd rather be tied up in a padded room somewhere, with Mary outside all right and alive. And Sam in school. And Dean... God, where would Dean be...

He realized with a sinking heart that he didn't know what Dean would be without all of this. He had made hunting so much a part of himself, had become such an extension of his father's obsession, that John simply Did. Not. Know.

_But alive_, he thought, _Alive _was a safe bet and a fair start. Dean would be alive if all of this was gone, and that was enough for John.

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" " "

John had taken to walking the hospital at night, wearing his borrowed/stolen/same thing night guard's uniform. He would peer at his sleeping son every night, watch him as he wheezed his heart out because there was no Sam or dad to pretend with anymore.

Every night, John would stop by that door, consider going inside, wanting to grip Dean's empty, open hands, wanting to smooth the creases on his face, now aged and lined by his pain. And every night he would just shuffle away. Dean looked like he was already halfway away from this life, and the wheezing seemed metaphorical of him running, running away from them.

One night, John was so used to walking that hospital and stopping by Dean's room at his leisure that he got reckless. Just kind of walked up to that door, expecting Dean to be asleep and lifting his head to find that he was wrong.

Dean was sitting up in bed, the table he usually used for eating pulled toward his chest, with John's journal sitting pretty right on top. A pen was poised at the ready between his fingers. Dean jerked in surprise at seeing his father, and though he looked beat-to-hell, his face widened to a welcoming grin. The oxygen mask was gone tonight, replaced by a nasal cannula that was not removed at all anymore, night or day, the wearer's will, vanity or pride notwithstanding.

"What made you change your mind (4,12)?" Dean asked.

"I haven't," John winced, looking left and right, before stepping inside. Dean's eyes rove through his father's uniform with humor.

"Nice," Dean grinned.

"Whatcha doin' over there?"

Dean flushed slightly, closed the book and put the pen down. He scratched the back of his neck in embarrassment. "Yeah, sorry, dad. I was just about to write some stuff down, I didn't think you'd mind--"

He looked like he was fucking eight years old, and John wanted to shoot himself in the foot for causing all of Dean's fears and hesitations.

"'Course I don't mind," John said at once, "It's your book, Dean, I wrote that stuff down for my stupid sons, you can write whatever you want."

Dean bit his lip, and nodded, looking away for a moment.

"So, ah..." he began, "You know I gotta ask you something. 'Cos Sam asked me and you know, if anyone would know anything, might be you, so... if you know the answer... if you could just tell him... might make him feel better, about things--

"You believe in God?" he asked suddenly, cutting off his own rambling.

Dean writing down in John's journal and asking about God. _God..._ must have meant they were running out of time.

John set his jaws, and contemplated lying. He knew Dean had read his face, because his expression sank, disappointed. It stings and softens John in a very familiar and predictable way.

"There's Something out there," John said, gruffly.

"Anything good?" Dean asked, smirking.

It took John a long moment before he could answer.

"You remember when you were a kid," John said with a sad smile, "And I first told you about all this stuff? You never doubted me, son. Never thought I lost my mind or anything like that. Whatever I said, it was true. Whatever I asked, there must have been a good reason for you, all the time. Whatever I did, whatever I said, you just trusted that there was a good reason, and that somehow things would be all right. You know that feeling?

"That's how I feel," John said, "About Something being out there."

Dean's brows rose, "I'm kinda surprised."

"That your father's isn't a godless sonofabitch?" John chuckled.

"No," Dean said, "It's just... I'm surprised, is all. That you'd be more like Sam than me about all this. I believe in what I can see. But Sam... I caught him praying here, once. The things you learn about a guy (13). And then again, and again I caught him when he thought I was asleep, and it looked natural on him, you know, like it was something he did all the time. Have you two been watching the 700 Club behind my back?"

"I don't know if there's a God, Dean," John admitted, "And I stopped praying a long time ago, myself. But it's so damn hard to do this, what we do (13). All alone, you know, and there's so much evil in the world I feel like I could drown in it. Sometimes, you just need to think there's Something Else watching too, you know (13)?"

"If someone's watching," Dean said, his tone clipped, "That's all they're doin,' seems like."

John hesitated for a moment, but he moved closer and held Dean's hand. His son flinched, need battling with his pride and embarrassment. It made John wince too, but he was father before everything else, and he just clung tighter. After a beat, Dean clung back with twice the force.

"I can't tell you why bad things happen to good people, Dean," John said, "No one can. I don't know why there's evil in the world. I don't know who's watching, or if at all there is someone out there looking out for us. But seems to me that every time something bad comes up there's always a way to stop it. Not always easy, but always true. Don't be scared, Dean (2). Everything's gonna be fine, you'll see."

"I've always trusted you dad," Dean said, softly, "So if you say so... If you think so... I can live with that."

_And die with it_, was the unspoken conclusion to that statement. John pulled him close in an embrace, and Dean hung tight. Dean held on, and John felt like a lifeline.

" " "

" " "

Later that night, he knocked on Sammy's motel room.

"What are you doing here (1)?" were the words his son had greeted him with, as he dragged himself into the room.

"I got your calls," John said, wincing with the simplicity of the words as he sat on one of the chairs in the room, and glancing at the paper-strewn mess that was Sam's bed. He saw lore books on demon deals and crossroads, blood pacts and ritual sacrifice offerings alongside medical journal entries. They looked strange all together.

"I thought you'd be around," Sam admitted, sounding annoyed again, which was his norm with his father.

John's brows rose, thinking back to that morning when he thought Sam was looking right at him, which at the time he felt must have been impossible.

"Yeah?"

"Dean stopped asking me if I called you," Sam shrugged, "Then I took a chance on tracing your phone. Told them some cock and bull story about my diabetic son running off with my car (14). It was surprisingly easy. And then there was this."

Sam drew out the dogtag John had left with Dean, now put on the honored keychain with the precious Impala's keys.

"He said," Sam's voice was taking on an angry edge, "I was getting very pissed at you, and he said 'Don't get mad, Sammy. Dad was here, I swear it, I'm not lying this time.' He sounded like he did when we were kids. I didn't feel like believing him this time, 'til he brought this out. I knew you'd turn up sooner or later."

_So they have been talking about me_, John thought, and wondered if Dean had asked for proof of his presence precisely for the purpose of assuring Sam that their father cared for them. Sounded like him, fair enough.

"So what, dad?" Sam asked, wearily, pocketing the keychain. John wondered why Sam didn't bother returning the tag yet, "Come to save the day?"

John cleared his throat. "I can't stay long--"

"What's new--"

"Just listen a minute--"

"That never worked before--"

"Damn it, Sam," John growled, before reigning in his temper, "Can we not fight (2)? Half the time we're fighting, I don't know what we're fighting about (2)."

Sam set his jaws, a retort at the tip of his tongue, but he nodded curtly, jerking his head at his father, as if giving him permission to continue.

"I ah..." John hesitated, looking at the references to dark magic on Sam's bed again, "I came here to tell you not to worry. That your brother's gonna be fine. That you shouldn't think about doing any of that crap there."

Sam blinked at his father, before narrowing his eyes in suspicion, "Why? What the hell did you do?"

John racked his brains for a decent lie. It was harder to lie to Sam than to Dean. Not that Dean couldn't tell; he was just better at pretending belief, and sometimes, John really needed that. Sam either just didn't want to bother, or didn't have as much practice as Dean when it came to putting on the game face.

"There's this priest," he said, "Up in New Orleans. Old magic stuff. Dean's gonna be fine."

_Well he will be_, John thought, _After I get a chat with a Crossroads Demon tonight..._

Sam's eyes flared in hope, for the blink of an eye. Hope and logic it was all the time, with Sam. He was always afire with hope, and then managed it with logic. The hope John could court, always, easily. The logic, not all the time. Certainly not tonight.

"If you'd done it already," Sam said, voice barely above a whisper as he began to come to some startling realizations, "You wouldn't have come here to tell me. You wouldn't have come here at all. You're here because you haven't done it. You're here to make sure I don't do anything you're about to."

"Sam--"

"You're gonna do it, aren't you?"

"Sam--"

"Stop lying, dad," Sam growled at him, "I'm not five years old anymore. You're gonna sell your soul, aren't you?"

John stared at him for a long time. "I can do this. Ten years is not a bad deal. And we'd have ten years to figure out how to get out of it--"

"God," Sam said in a half-choked, laughing-sob. There was a joke there, something deep and scathing that Sam found tragically funny but John could not completely comprehend.

"No one ever has," Sam told him, still in that same, broken tone.

"What's going on with you?" John asked him.

"Damned if I didn't tell Dean the exact same thing," Sam said, running a hand wearily over his face, "Ten years is a long time to find a way to weasel out of a deal, right? But listen, dad. You're not doing that crap. Not while I'm around, all right? I have a plan."

John's brows rose. "What?"

"This guy in Nebraska you wrote about--"

"LeGrange is a bust," John groaned, thinking he just had this conversation with Dean...

"No, he's for real," Sam insisted, and then went on to explain what John already knew, about how LeGrange was trading one life for another, but if it worked, and that was what it took...

"I don't care anymore, dad," Sam said, his voice shaking, "If that's what it takes, I don't care. Dean wouldn't let me bring him, but he might listen to you, or we can take him when he's out--"

"LeGrange is a bust because I stopped him just before coming here," John said, softly, running a hand over his face, "Dean knows that, I don't know why he didn't tell you."

Or maybe he did, John realized, because the same enlightened and heartbroken look was settling on Sam's face.

"He didn't tell me," Sam said, "Because he needed to know this was a decision I could make." His eyes watered, and the fight had gone out of him because the tears started to streak down his cheeks, "Damn it, Dean..."

Sam sank down to sit at the edge of the bed, putting his head in his hands, "Damn it. I guess I failed that test, didn't I? God... I've been wracking my brains, thinking about what I was doing, letting my brother die, or killing somebody else. And all this time he knew it wasn't going to work anyway. I could kill him."

He raised his head up to look at his father hotly. "And _you_. I _needed_ you here. I was going to let him die. And then I was going to kill somebody else to save him. I needed you here. I needed you to tell me I was wrong, dad!"

"I'm sorry, son," John said, quietly, tentatively, reaching out and putting a hand to Sam's knee. "But we can get around this, son, I swear it. Way I see it, this demon deal's the only way out of this so... this is how it's gotta be. Ten years to figure out an exit plan ain't a bad deal."

"No," Sam said fervently, looking up suddenly, "You're not doing that, dad. I won't let you. Not as long as I'm alive. You're my dad. And I promised Dean. I'd rather die. _I'll_ do it."

"You're dreaming if you think I'll let that happen," John snapped, "I'm your father, I'm supposed to look out for you. And Dean wouldn't want that for you."

"Or you," Sam pointed out, "I won't let you do it, dad. 'Cos I don't want to, 'cos Dean doesn't want you to, and 'cos I promised him."

"Well you're not doing it," John said, with finality, which was exactly the kind of tone that never worked on Sam.

"Neither are you."

They stared at each other, and just like _that!_ they knew. They were caught in Dean's clever little _Stranglehold_. They were strung together and deadlocked on this, now, matched in every way.

"Listen, dad," Sam said, one last ditch effort at reason, "What are we gonna do, huh? Race to draw cross chalks on the floor, see who gets to drive to a crossroads first? Drug each other? We can talk about this like adults..."

_Could they?_, John wondered, because they tried that with _college_ once and that was only Sam's second most important thing in the world, following Dean, and they all knew how that worked out (_It did not)_.

"You're not doing it," John said again, "And I'm not letting you out of my sight."

"You're not doing it either," Sam countered, "And I'm following you anywhere you go."

John stared at his son's face. The naked conviction, the unquestionable strength.

_I did miss you growing up_, he thought. He was still a danger to Sam, God knows, but it was much more dangerous leaving him alone, at this point, and what had Dean said?

_Don't be alone too long, dad..._

_Let him help you once in awhile...He needs you._

_And I need him too_, John knew.

Winchesters have always weathered storms much better when they had a job to do, and each other to look out for. He survived Mary's death only because he had sons to look after and a killer to hunt down. Dean very openly lived for his brother and his father. Sam was a mix of both. Now, presumably, Dean had concocted this crazy plan of ensuring that both Sam and John survived this latest tragedy by tying them together, making one look after the other, especially since apparently, they weren't willing to take care of themselves.

_Clever_, John conceded, even as he thought, _I'm going to kill him_.

"I guess," Sam gulped, "I guess this is what Dean wants. I'm going to kill him."

The unknowing echo of his father's thoughts made John smile grimly, "Don't I know it."

" " "

" " "

Dean Winchester died a day after one month of being admitted to the hospital. It was that rebellious streak in him, John figured. The doc said a month at most, and Dean must have decided he'd prove him wrong no matter what.

In his last days, the doctors allowed Sam in on all hours, and John joined him, less afraid of the danger he presented to his sons now that he had already resolved to drag Sam around anyway and Dean was already at the end of his rope.

It was the first time the three Winchester men were in the same room for an extended period of time in years, and Dean looked tired but damn proud of himself. Half-awake and grinning to himself, like it was his achievement. _Damn fool_.

In one of those days, Sam had placed the keys to the Impala within easy sight and reach of Dean, right at the night table near his arm, asking something wordlessly and yet very clearly – _Wanna get out of here_?

Dean reached for the keys right away, wistfully, thoughts and memories and considerations playing over his face as he fiddled with the keys. They all knew that the car was his most prized possession in the world. He hadn't been in the Impala in nearly a month, not since he got laid up here, and had been asked by his brother to stay put to live longer. Today though, with the offer plainly given by Sam, he was being let go, set free... it was as freeing as being in his car, in those bright nights and illuminated long, endless roads, driving with the windows down, ushering the wind as a warm breeze ruffling his hair. The Impala was freedom, but Sam's letting go was so much more so.

"Nah, I'm good," he said with a cheeky grin, though his fingers still toyed with the keys, affectionately, and he still did not relinquish them to his brother.

"This place growing on you?" Sam teased, a sad, slight smile on his lips.

"Hell yeah," Dean lied, though he did look at his brother and father meaningfully, "I want 'longer,' right, Sammy? So I guess this is where I gotta be."

They spent the time watching Dean's favorite soap, and had witnessed Roger's lovelife burn to the ground. It was better than Sam expected, and as inane as John thought it would be. They read through their father's journal at night, Sam and John taking turns reading and taking turns interrupting and tossing barbs at each other, the three men using the entries as starting points for talking about all the odd things they've seen in their lives.

Everyday and night it crossed John's mind to put up his soul for sale. _Every_ day and _every_ night. Watching his sons talk, or in the absence of words, like the nights that Dean's breaths ran short, just how they looked at each other, and at him... God, it wrenched him. Nothing can break a Winchester but love. Once in awhile he'd try to slip by, but Sam missed _nothing_, he never has, even as a child, and he was not about to start now, and most especially not with this. Besides, the game was on, and despite popular belief that Dean was wilier, Sam _never_ lost. _Ever_. And so the days ran on...

Dean hung on until just before they reached the very end of the journal, where he had scrawled a few words in that casually forceful writing, the letters leaving impressions and deep grooves on the paper.

_I wish I could stay around, always knew we'd be stronger as a family (11), but you know, what can you do. I love you dad. I love you Sammy. I'll be around, I think. I hope. I don't know what's out there, no one does... and you know I'm not much of a praying type, but I'm gonna pray for you (1). Most of all, I'm gonna be praying for my car. You better take care of her, or else I'll haunt your ass (1). Look out for each other. I'll tag-team with mom. We'll all be okay somehow._

Dean passed away coolly, as if it was so easy for him, like picking up a girl in a bar for a romp in the sack, or pulling out of a driveway in the Impala. The days of his pain and weariness kind of just slid off of him one night, and his eyes were wide and bright and acutely aware. He had looked almost healed. He said good night. And then he said nothing else, ever again. It was not a bad way for a good guy to go. He certainly looked as if he did not think so. He looked calm, and happy. Like a young man falling into a deep, beautiful sleep, the kind you never wanted to wake him up from, the kind you'd never want to pull him back from...

In true Winchester fashion, John and Sam stole his body from the morgue and prepared for some salting and burning action in a woodsy area a few miles off the sleepy town. They bore the body as if revered, and Sam took the wheel of the Impala and let his father cradle the now-empty shell of his brother at the backseat, not daring to look at the rearview mirror and lose his nerve and heart about all this. John was grateful at the concession, and he held Dean, what was left of him, smelled his hair, looked him over, never imagining, never ever conceiving that such a thing could happen to the beautiful shiny, pretty baby he held in his hands not too long ago.

_I would sell my soul for you_, he knew, his mind hasn't changed. But neither has Sam's, and for now, _for now_, this should hold. Dean was dead, but his beloved brother and father were not only alive and well, they were tied together, as he had always wanted them to be.

When they were laying him ready for the pyre, John eyed the amulet around Dean's neck, and when he looked up at Sam, he realized that his younger son was doing the exact same thing. He wondered if the two of them would fight about who got to keep that. They didn't. Sam suggested they bury it along their mother's grave, and John agreed. Days later, hands and knees on the soil before Mary's headstone, Sam dug around for a bit, and then put in Dean's amulet to the ground. He folded soil over it in a careful, repetitive and strategic way that weirdly enough reminded John of gift-wrapping.

And then they drove away in the Impala, deathly quiet, except for Sam's heavy foot on the wheel and the fact that he was going out of his way to meet every pothole on the ground that he could see, in an effort to court Dean's pissed-off ghost.

John let him work through his grief. The two of them, they've survived deaths of loved ones before, after all. Granted, probably the main reason they survived was because of Dean...but now that it was Dean himself who was gone... well.

_Well_.

But they did have each other, he and Sam. And they did have that one other thing (_aside from Dean_) that could help them weather all the losses that have ever hurt them.

_We've got a job to do (15, 16)_.

THE END

April 15, 2008

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**AFTERWORD**  
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" " "

**Big Thanks** to PADavis, Flaming Telepaths, Stoneage Woman and Zuimar for reading and reviewing. As I may have mentioned before, I'm new at this fandom and am grateful for the highly perceptive and enthusiastic feedback.

I am also very grateful to all who took the time to read. While 6 reviews is admittedly unremarkable, haha, with or without reviews, you have still shared your valuable time and that is a whole lot to give too.

Anyway, if you're interested, a few production notes:

1. On Quoting Episodes and Recurring Expressions

2. The Ending and an Alternate Ending

3. Characterizations

4. Next Project

1. **On quoting episodes, and recurring expressions**

As previously posted, the numbered statements within the story correspond to the following episodes:

(1) Faith

(2) In My Time of Dying

(3) What Is and What Could Never Be

(4) A Very Supernatural Christmas

(5) Home

(6) Devil's Trap

(7) Red Sky at Morning

(8) Malleous Maleficarum

(9) Fresh Blood

(10) Dream a Little Dream

(11) Dead Man's Blood

(12) Scarecrow

(13) Houses of the Holy

(14) Born Under a Bad Sign

(15) Pilot

(16) All Hell Breaks Loose Part 2

As I mentioned in my foreword, there was an intentional literary reason why I decided to quote episodes or pick up the ideas of certain statements along the course of "Things We Know."

You may notice that **all quoted episodes are episodes that happened after "Faith** (except for #5 Home, which I started to use until I changed my mind, and was not used in "Things We Know;" I just kept the number because I've already used numbers 6-16 and didn't want to re-organize the whole thing)." This is because **"Things We Know" summarizes all the conversations** from the latter episodes **that never would have happened if Dean had died** in "Faith."

Aside from that literary device, I also used some recurring expressions from the series, such as the Winchester-patented dumbfounded/I-heard-you-but-it-hasn't-sunk-in-yet "What?" and "What made you change your mind?" I of course also had to use the "We got a job to do" gung-ho statement, which had been said by Sam in the Pilot, Dean at the end of season two, and I had to close it with John in "Things We Know." This is to create a feeling of consistency, as if these were real people and these were their usual expressions.

**The title** of the fic itself, you may note, was also plucked from "Faith," during Sam's phone call to his father and he says _**They don't know things we know**_. I was also hoping to emphasize one of the larger themes of the fic, which was the casual manipulation of truth between the three Winchesters.

2. **The Ending**

People who have read my stories before have a very unique understanding and appreciation for the fact that I have no bones about killing off characters. Morality makes everything amplified and move in fast forward. It intrigues me, because it forces prioritization, honesty and action. Suddenly, the things that are important come to light, and suddenly time is not enough. From the get-go, Dean was slated to die in this fic, though in afterthought, the teaser could have hinted at Sam's demise instead.

Anyway, the key elements on the ending are these:

a. **Sam and John are still willing to sell their souls to bring Dean back, but probably won't be doing so**. As we all know, haha, Winchesters never say die so yes, the ending of "Things We Know" does maintain that they are both still willing to give this option a go. However, Dean found a way to keep them from succeeding by pitting them against each other. I know many will agree that while the Winchesters typically have little care for themselves, they probably wouldn't think twice about protecting each other, and that is why the deadlock can work... at least for a little while, haha. As long as they try to stop each other, then they should both be kept alive.

b. **The desire to bring Dean back should fade with time**. Already, this is hinted on when John muses about how Dean looked peaceful and happy in death, as if he had fallen into a good sleep that John didn't want to wake him from.

**The Alternate Ending. **I was so tempted to keep the original ending to this fic that I kept trying to shove it into the fic somewhere, _anywhere_, but ultimately did not succeed because it would have changed the story too much.

In the alternate ending, John, Sam and Dean never end up in the same room together. John promises Dean to look after Sam. Sam promises Dean to look for their father. The two stubborn Winchesters live for these promises, and keep them. The ending scene would have been titled _Haunted Objects, Reprise_, and was of John writing a journal entry of how he had watched, from a distance, of course, a heartbroken Sam behind the wheel of the Impala after Dean's death, slamming it frontwards and then back, as if daring Dean's ghost to come and call him out on it. Sam and John would not have run into each other in the story at all. Visually, this scene really appealed to me. Jared Padalecki can pull off the no-holds-barred-orphan-look so easily and distinctly, as he did in "In My Time of Dying," that it was hard to let go of the visual. But then I figured, these characters would break promises like that, _easy_. I thought the only thing that would keep Sam and John from setting up demon deals to save Dean was each other, so that's how the fic went instead, and the scene of course, was lost with it.

3. **Characterizations**

a. **Sam**

Dean is actually my favorite, so I found it odd that I was more inspired by Sam's conflict. In "Faith," Sam apologizes to Dean for brining him to LeGrange, saying he didn't know what was really going on and had only wanted to save his brother's life. "Things We Know" attempted to answer what Sam would have done if he had known about the life-trade.

Hands down I would bet Dean would have been willing to still give LeGrange a shot if it were the other way around. Sam would be much more eaten up by the decision, certainly, not because he had a more compelling sense of right or wrong than his older brother but I guess simply because they were still two different people. Toward the end of "Things We Know," though, I guess in compliance also with the darker tone Sam is getting in the series itself lately, I can imagine that it is a choice he could make, to have someone else die to save his brother, especially someone who 'deserved' it. I'm certain many people will disagree, haha, but there it is.

b. **John**

It seems to me that the general consensus is that John must have been (1) aware of Dean's illness during "Faith" and (2) could have had something to do with finding the solution. It's very reasonable for fans to believe that John would not have just shrugged off something like that, after all. I guess it's also reasonable to be looking for a more caring, actively involved John Winchester. Besides, who can possibly resist seeing more of Jeffrey Dean Morgan, haha.

The debatable aspect of his character in this fic, however, may be that I have resolved to have him get rid of LeGrange even if he knew that the guy could save Dean. According to canon, after all, John was even willing to deal with his wife's killer to save his son. But here, he snuffs out his son's only chance at life. I guess that's because my impression of John Winchester is, as Dean thought of him in this fic:

_His problem was that he was a great man, batting for great causes, and understanding that all that crap came at great costs. He could actually imagine his father just like one of those sad mythical figures standing victorious on a ravaged battlefield, alone. Grimy, lonely, triumphant last man standing, who lost everything but won the war_.

c. **Dean**

I guess when I explain characterizations in my afterwords, they're explanations precisely because the fic might have raised some debatable character issues. In "Things We Know," I think I went straight for the archetypal Dean: tough guy with a soft spot for kids and his brother, the devoted family guy perpetually caught between his brother and his father, this guy who had heartbreakingly simple aspirations in life. I don't think I veered too far away from the standard perception of him.

4. **Next Project**

If I should ever get around to writing it, the next project will be a continuation of Season Three as it currently stands (post _Jus In Bello_), which probably means that as the next few episodes come about, it will eventually be considered an AU. I've never shied away from being adventurous when it came to writing weird stuff so that doesn't bother me really, assuming I ever actually do get to write it that is, haha... Anyway, the genre is probably going to be action/adventure/drama. If I get my way, I need it to feel larger, like a summer movie, not so much like my angsty fics (like "Things We Know") whose approach is more intimate and contemplative. Anyway...

Title: Road to Hell

Summary: Every demon knows that if they want to get out of hell, all they had to do was kill Dean Winchester, and then keep him at the very back of the line... because as long as he stays there, Sam's going to be keeping that Hell's Gate wide open.

Clip:_"You know everyone in the Pack is trying to find a way to keep your brother alive," Ruby told him, and there was this wink of light in her eyes that he was getting more and more used to, which was a mix of calculation and pitch-black humor._

_"You don't make it sound like it's a good thing," Sam commented, finding that he wanted to know her thoughts. God, she was annoying sometimes but damned if she didn't almost always have something useful to say._

_"Oh there's nothing selfless about it, if that's what you mean," she said, "The same way I'm helping you not to help you, but to help me. You see, Sam, the great thing about this setup is that you are surrounded by selfish and or single-minded people. This means that you'll always know what they're about to do and why. This makes them so much more reliable than so-called noble people, because morals sway every which way, now and again. The selfish are always predictable and controllable. Take the infamous Bela Talbot, for instance."_

_"What about her?"_

_"Everyone knows she's a bitch," Ruby shrugged, "But every time anyone needs something and they can afford it, they call her. Simple, clean and straightforward Bela Talbot. You, on the other hand..."_

_"What about me?"_

_"Lovely, earnest, _noble_ Sam Winchester," Ruby said with an indulgent smile, "Whose once iron-clad straight-laced boy-scout ways have become the occasionally inconvenient morality. You are more dangerous than selfish people, Sam, because no one ever knows when the straw will break."_

_"What does all this have to do with my brother?" Sam asked, edgily._

_"Every demon knows that if they want to get out of hell," she replied, "All they had to do was kill Dean Winchester, and then keep him at the very back of the line because as long as he stays there, you're going to be keeping that Hell's Gate wide open."_

_"The Pack thinks I'll be opening that damn door?" Sam asked, incredulous._

_"If Dean ends up there," she said with a shrug, "Not very hard to believe, is it, Sam? Sure sounds like something you'd do for old short-buzz. Daddy Winchester got out the same way after all."_

_Sam set his jaws, and looked away. "Even if I wanted to, what could I possibly do to make that happen, huh? The Colt's with them, not me. How could they even think I can go up against them?"_

_"You're the Big Cheese, remember?" she pointed out, and it suddenly struck him that she might be even more annoyed with him and Dean than they were with her._

She can't stand me_, was an odd revelation._

_"It's a possibility they'd avoid if they could," she said, "Besides, the options are pretty narrow. Save Dean and keep you on their side, or lose Dean and turn you into a loose cannon. Of course, if they lose Dean, they can just kill you and be rid of the problem, but they need you too, to win this war. There's just something about you, Sam."_

_"What's new," Sam muttered._

_"You're like the personification of the Colt," she said, "If you think about it, it's its own foil, because its two functions counteract one another: It's the key that opens the door to hell, and it's the only thing that can kill a demon. Humans can't destroy the key to hell to keep it locked forever because they need the gun. Demons can't destroy the only weapon that can destroy them because they need the key. Catch 21."_

_Sam's brows rose. He's never thought of it that way, much less that he would be the human version of that little problem. Sometimes, it really was better not to listen to what Ruby had to say..._

_"So what have they come up with for my brother?" he asked, speaking of single-minded things..._

_"You know how to lose a hellhound?" she asked, "Same as shaking ant dog off your tail. You gotta change your scent."_

_"Meaning?"_

_"We need to _hide_ Dean," she said, and Sam knew that Ruby could not possibly be referring to a literal hiding, or, or running. Because there was no literal, physical hiding or running from a hellhound._

_"Hellhounds hunt those who made the Deal," she said, "At the end of the term, their hearts and their minds and everything that makes them who they are no longer belongs to them, but to the demon. But if we hide him from himself, there wouldn't be anyone to hunt, now would there?"_

_"What?"_

_"There's a potion that can make people forget everything," she said, "And there's a spell that can create new memories and new realities. He'll be someone else. And he'll be very, _very_ alive."_

_Sam's brows furrowed in thought, thinking back to the time Dean was abducted by a djinn, and how it had manipulated his reality, and how he wanted so much to stay..._

_"New realities," he murmured, thoughtfully._

_"But you won't be allowed to see him, of course," she said, "Or maybe you can see him, but he can't see you. He's not allowed to know you at all. He's not allowed hints of his old life. If you want him to be safe from the hounds, you need him to be someone else completely."_

_"I can live with that," Sam said softly, knowing that it wasn't a lie. Dean alive... and Dean with a new life, a fresh start, even one that didn't involve, it could be enough. It _really_ could be enough, especially given the alternative. _

_"There's one thing you're not asking me," she said with a knowing smile. Her eyes were afire again, and Sam was starting to get nervous._

_"Weaseling your way out of this deal is going to get you killed," she said, "Aren't you worried about that?"_

Dean alive_, he thought_, Dean happy_..._

_"I am concerned," he admitted with a wince, "But it didn't come to mind right away, no."_

_"I'm helping you to help _me_, remember?" she asked, "And we both know you're no good to me dead. So even if you break the demon deal for your brother, I'm pretty sure you'd still be alive."_

_"Why is that?"_

_"You know perfectly well there's just one thing that can keep a dead body alive and running around, Sam," she said, seriously, her eyes dimming, and then shutting down to a perfect, depth-less black._

_"You've already got it inside you," she said, wistfully now, "All you gotta do is give in."_

TO BE POSSIBLY CONTINUED...


End file.
